Python: The Fake '-=-' Operator

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0500

While writing some Python, I accidentally swapped two characters:

a =- b       # What I wrote
a -= b       # What I intended

That’s “equals minus” instead of “minus equals”. I was initially surprised that the interpreter allowed it. Digging in, I found that a =- b, is equivalent to a = -b (spaces don’t matter), which is the same as a = -1 * b. Rather than decrementing a by the amount b, I was assigning a to be the inverse of b.

Hello, netizens

Wed, 03 May 2023 19:23:01 -0400

I’m excited to join the blogosphere.

Rayhan Hasan

Python: The Fake '-=-' Operator

Hello, netizens