I'm quite strongly against because it collides with a well-established meaning of `\` in python: escape character. It's used to avoid command termination by newline in things like formulas (as "\<newline", which gets parsed as whitespace rather than command termination outside of brackets).
I'm in fact rather shocked that `\` in sage already doesn't work as it's supposed to in python but instead gets substituted as "BackslashOperator()". Searching the codebase currently only shows "_backslash_" implemented on matroid, matrix, and binary_tree, so extinguishing it should be doable. We should definitely not entrench its use further. If you want to write your denominator first, you can already do ~2 * 3 . I think that's already sufficiently perverse that we don't need another way to spell that. On Wednesday, 27 September 2023 at 12:16:57 UTC-7 David Joyner wrote: > On Wed, Sep 27, 2023 at 2:32 PM John H Palmieri <jhpalm...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> The github issue #36060 (https://github.com/sagemath/sage/issues/36060) >> proposes adding a backslash operator for Sage integers, so that "2 \ 3" >> will return the same as "3 / 2". Do you support this? >> >> > I'm not for or against. However, I don't see the problem that implementing > this "\" is going to solve. The ticket suggests that users will naturally > type 2\3 instead of 3/2, if I am reading between the lines correctly. > > >> BackslashOperator is defined in "sage/misc/misc.py", and the preparser >> converts "A \ b" to the appropriate Python code. The docstring for >> BackslashOperator says "Implements Matlab-style backslash operator for >> solving systems A \ b". >> >> It seems pretty innocuous to me — in fact I don't care much either way — >> but since Sage integers are so ubiquitous, it seems like a good idea to ask >> before implementing it. >> >> -- >> John >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "sage-devel" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/3f157aa4-74cd-4c5c-bc76-f198c6417432n%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/3f157aa4-74cd-4c5c-bc76-f198c6417432n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/f7a940bd-ced4-4441-b57c-059b8f65e704n%40googlegroups.com.
