Paul McGuire enlightened us with: >> That goes against the usual meaning of "all" in, say, mathematical >> logic. >> >> Usually, "for all X in S, PRED(x) is true" means: there does not >> exist X in S so that PRED(x) is false. >> > How do you get this "usually" stuff?
>From its mathematical definition. > I would agree that this is usually implemented as a short-circuited > loop through the list, that breaks out at the first False value. Implementation is irrelevant when it comes to the definition of a mathematical operator. > But I would not be quick to equate "commonality of implementation" > with "meaning". Which is good. > Perhaps we should consult a more formal mathematical resource for > this. In mathematics, 'for all x in A, f(x) is True' is true when A is empty. You can either look it up on trust someone who studied mathematics (me) on it. Sybren -- The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself? Frank Zappa -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list