On Wed, 06 Sep 2017 01:31:56 +0000, Stefan Ram wrote: > Steve D'Aprano <steve+pyt...@pearwood.info> writes: >>On Wed, 6 Sep 2017 12:19 am, Rustom Mody wrote: >>>And how do you write even the simplest assignment statement without a >>>(mathematical) expression on the rhs? >>name = other_name is not a mathematical expression. Its giving something >>a new name. > > In mathematics, every author is free to give his own definitions to > concepts and create his own notation. [...] > Of course, definitions of the form > > x := 2 y := x
Indeed they do. Perhaps I should have said that the Python assignment name = other_name is not *necessarily* a mathematical expression, but can also be used to give an object a new name. We can argue whether mathematics has assignment at all, or merely has definitions. That's a level of hair-splitting where I'm happy to sit on the fence and not give an opinion as to whether the mathematical definition: y = 2 is or is not the same as the Python assignment: y = 2 -- Steven D'Aprano “You are deluded if you think software engineers who can't write operating systems or applications without security holes, can write virtualization layers without security holes.” —Theo de Raadt -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list