This week in Programming Language appreciation: the multiplication operator in Python. You can use it on strings and arrays for incredible ease of use. For a horizontal line in a terminal?

print("-" * 30)

Very helpful, and I have used it a lot. And I miss it in other languages.

I might do this weekly. You can discuss things you like about your favorite (or any) language, and I may appreciate them in a post!

I would rather use a string repeat function for that tbh. This kind of thing is what ticks me off about Python et. al. (don't get me wrong, I love Python otherwise).

@RememberMe I love syntax that reads like english. That's the largest reason Lua is my favorite language. It has many flaws otherwise.

But seeing "-" * 30 and getting "------------------------------" as output just is so intuitive. That's exactly what you expect. And with Python's lack of type coercion, it's not confusing or ambiguous, either

So “3” * 3 is “333”? Amazing, what could go wrong

I like Python's for-else loops.

You could do that in many (statically typed) functional languages too, you just need to overload the * operator.

(REPL link: https://bit.ly/33kz3PL)

To add on to @finiteAutomaton’s comment here’s an overload for c++:

std::string operator*(std::string s, int n) {
std::string out = "";
while(n--) {
out += s;
}
return out;
}

Fuck Im gonna implement this in Java.
It's something I never knew I needed

@Ranchu Java? Does Java have operator overloading now?

Funny, this is one of the things they borrowed from Perl. Only there it is a "x" operator.
One of the uses is repeated patterns like the wake on LAN Magic packet.

@AlgoRythm sadly No, i'll Just smack it into a method.

That also works in ruby. Quite useful for debugging.

@AlgoRythm @Ranchu I believe Kotlin has it though...

@RagingCodeChimp Kotlin is the big tits rich sister to Java. Of course it does...

@AlgoRythm ok, I lol'ed 😂