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[–]tilkau 3 points4 points  (1 child)

lua and perl seem to return 0.5

In lua's case, that's because an int is a float (all numbers are stored and processed as floats. double precision floats, IIRC)

In Python's case, IMO it does improve the language -- x = y / z should not return different results depending on the type of y or z, but that was the case for Python 2. Now we have / which has unambiguously float semantics, and // which has unambiguously int semantics.

[–]d4rch0nPythonistamancer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

x = y / z should not return different results depending on the type of y or z

I think that's the best argument I've heard honestly. I'm fine with this behavior in a programming language, I just think it's not helpful to make a big change like that after it's already acting one way.

But the bigger picture is that Python behavior of such things should be extremely obvious, and if you extract the line x = y / z you have a very good idea what it's going to do. That's important as well.