On Jan 16, 2008 11:31 AM, William Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Jan 16, 2008 9:26 AM, Robert Bradshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > There is no way in python to detect how many arguments a function > > result will be assigned to, and I'm not a fan of magma's way of doing > > it. WIth variable length tuples one has to check the length of a > > tuple before unpacking it. > > I'll just come out and say it -- It's a _terrible_ design in Magma. I also > found it bad when I used it. I once overheard somebody at IHP in Paris > talking with John Cannon about Magma and learning of variable numbers > of return arguments (as in Magma), and just being incredulous that they > could have actually implemented something like that. And personally > it makes the computer scientist in me cringe. > > Python's solution to the multiple-return-values problem, with > automatic tuple unpacking, is much more elegant.
And it's worth noting that for py3k they added the very nice extension: >>> a, *b, c = range(5) >>> a 0 >>> c 4 >>> b [1, 2, 3] Details here: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3132/ Cheers, f --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
