list(matrix) vs. matrix.list()

[Andrey Novoseltsev]

Hello,

I find the following confusing:

sage: m = matrix(2)
sage: m
[0 0]
[0 0]
sage: m.list()
[0, 0, 0, 0]
sage: list(m)
[(0, 0), (0, 0)]

There can be arguments on what is a list of a matrix, but I think that
two outputs above should be the same. Are there any reasons to not
make it happen? Since m.list() already returns flat list of elements,
I think that list(m) also should do it, so that we don't break code
relying on m.list().

Thank you,
Andrey

[Jason Grout]

But there is probably also a lot of code that relies on the list(m)
behavior. For example, this behavior is what allows m[0] to mean the
first row, which certainly is used a lot.

Maybe m.list() should be renamed to m.elements()? That way it's not
confusing, and it's also not confusing to have two ways to get the list
of elements.

Jason

[Nils Bruin]

On Sep 14, 3:02 pm, Andrey Novoseltsev <novos...@gmail.com> wrote:
> sage: list(m)
> [(0, 0), (0, 0)]

This is just a consequence of iter(m) yielding an iterator over the
rows of m. Changing that would break code.

[Kwankyu Lee]

How about m.entries()? I think "entry" is quite standard.