See http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2009-March/087000.html
and http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576685/ .

That's the best version I recall seeing at activestate.
Still, I'd deprecate and remove > and >= from mathematics.

What is the purpose of this submission? What do you want to happen about
Python?

(As I recall) in python-dev mailing list Ray claimed he could clean up a
cited active state recipe to address this issue.  He succeeded to the
extent I'm aware---he's the author of
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576685/.
I haven't used the redundant >, >= comparisons operators in code since
1981.  The chances of simplifying python by removing them from the
language are None, but the mistake predates python by 10**n years, where
(3 <= n <= 7) or (7 >= n >= 3).

Then why was this classified as a documentation issue? And why did Mart
Sömmermaa submit it, and not Raymond? AFAICT, Raymond said he would
propose something when it's ready (which I assume it currently isn't).

> Then why was this classified as a documentation issue?
As the documentation section of
http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#object.__lt__ needs to
be updated as well to mark the eventual solution as the recommended easy
way to provide total ordering.
> And why did Mart Sömmermaa submit it, and not Raymond? AFAICT, Raymond
said he would propose something when it's ready (which I assume it
currently isn't).
Raymond's recipe at http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576685/ looks
more or less complete, do you feel that his posting on the mailing list
does not count as proposal? I submitted the feature request instead of
him because I was the one who noticed the problem (as discussed on the
mailing list) and felt "responsible" to report it here.

> As the documentation section of
> http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#object.__lt__ needs to
> be updated as well to mark the eventual solution as the recommended easy
> way to provide total ordering.
This is the 2.6 version. What about the 3.0 version in
http://docs.python.org/3.0/reference/datamodel.html#object.__lt__
needs to be updated?
> Raymond's recipe at http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576685/ looks
> more or less complete, do you feel that his posting on the mailing list
> does not count as proposal? I submitted the feature request instead of
> him because I was the one who noticed the problem (as discussed on the
> mailing list) and felt "responsible" to report it here.
I see. So it's a feature request.

> This is the 2.6 version. What about the 3.0 version in
> http://docs.python.org/3.0/reference/datamodel.html#object.__lt__
> needs to be updated?
When functools.total_ordering (whether it lands in functools is open)
lands that section should be amended in the lines of the following:
"There are no implied relationships among the comparison operators. The
truth of x==y does not imply that x!=y is false. Accordingly, when
defining __eq__(), one should also define __ne__() so that the operators
will behave as expected.
However, given a class defining one or more ordering methods,
`functools.total_ordering`_ class decorator can be used to fill in the
rest. Please see the documentation of `functools.total_ordering`_ for
further details."

See r79730.
Leaving open until tests are written and all is forward ported to 3.2.

Hello
Small documentation question: Does the expression “total ordering” have established usage in maths or computer science? Its meaning is not obvious to the non-maths person that I am.
Regards

Yes, it's a standard mathematics term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order

Thanks for the link. Please include it in the future doc if you judge it useful for a large number of users.
I’m still wondering if “total_ordering” is the best name for a decorator that fills the blanks to provide total ordering.
Regards

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order
For pair of items from a set,  (that's the total)
if  a <= b  and  b <= c  then  a <= c  (part of the order)
if  a <= b  and  b <= a  then  a compares the same as b, a == b, (the
other part of the order)
On Mon, 2010-04-05 at 19:46 +0000, Éric Araujo wrote:
> Éric Araujo <merwok@netwok.org> added the comment:
>
> Hello
>
> Small documentation question: Does the expression “total ordering” have established usage in maths or computer science? Its meaning is not obvious to the non-maths person that I am.
>
> Regards
>
> ----------
>
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <http://bugs.python.org/issue5479>
> _______________________________________

Applied in r79810
Thanks for the suggestion.

versions: + Python 3.2