Richard Blackwood wrote:
Bengt Richter wrote:Maybe he doesn't know that foo = 5 in Python is not an equation as in math,Could I honestly argue this to him? From what basis do I argue that it is not an equation?
but a Python source language statement to be translated to a step in some
processing sequence.
Tell him in Python foo is a member of one set and 5 is a member of another,
and foo = 5 expresses the step of putting them into correspondence
to define a mapping, not declaring them equal.
From the basis of reality?
From the point of view of Python, it is an assignment statement, not an 'equation'. According to the docs, "Assignment statements are used to (re)bind names to values....[it] evaluates the expression list...and assigns the single resulting object to each of the target lists, from left to right."
http://docs.python.org/ref/assignment.html
'foo = 5' means the same as d['foo'] = 5 for some dictionary d. Doesn't sound like an equation to me.
It also might be of interest that googling "equation site:docs.python.org" yields a single hit which is talking about random distributions.
If your friend (!) is open-minded enough to learn what the semantics of assignment actually are in Python then you might be able to have a more productive conversation.
Kent -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
