On 23/09/2014 20:30, Mark Lawrence wrote: > On 23/09/2014 18:43, blindanagram wrote: >> On 23/09/2014 18:26, Stefan Behnel wrote: >>> Wolfgang Maier schrieb am 23.09.2014 um 18:38: >>>> While at first I thought this to be a rather irrelevant debate over >>>> module >>>> private vs public naming conventions, I now think the OP is probably >>>> right >>>> and renaming fractions.gcd to fractions._gcd may be a good idea. >>> For negative numbers, the "expected" behaviour seems to be unclear, >>> so the >>> current behaviour is just as good as any, so backwards compatibility >>> concerns clearly win this fight. >> >> The expected behaviour is not unclear for anyone who takes the >> mathematical properties of the GCD seriously. It's a shame that Python >> doesn't. >> > All you need do is raise an issue on the bug tracker, provide a patch to > code, test and docs and the job is done.
Thank you for your helpful comment. I will happily do this if after discussion here there is a reasonable level of support and encouragement for such an action. However, there is at least one person here who takes the view that backward compatibility outranks mathematical correctness and I don't want to find that 'I am banging my head against a brick wall' if this is likely to be the stance that Python developers take. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
