Hi David and John, On 2012-11-08, David Loeffler <d.a.loeff...@warwick.ac.uk> wrote: > It is *really awful* that V.sum(W) attempts to sum all the elements of > W! I don't know what general design decision underlies this but I > don't like it.
That's easy to explain. All additive semigroups should be able to sum up a list of their elements. Hence, such as summation method is defined by the category framework. Apparently it not only accepts a list, but any iterable. Problem: Vektor spaces may be infinite, but are iterable. Solution: The sum() method (and prod() similarly) should accept iterables *of finite length*. Hence if you have a vector space V and len(V) raises an error (this is what it currently does) or returns Infinity, then V.sum(V) should raise an error. Other solution: Rename sum() to sum_of_elements(). I don't like it. Cheers, Simon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
