Rect intersection inplace operation

[imntl]

Hello,

I have a question regarding the intersect operation of the rect object and could not find any information in issues or other discussions. As found in the documentation:

The intersection (common rectangular area, largest rectangle contained in both) of the current rectangle and r is calculated and replaces the current rectangle.

My question would be, why it is important that the intersection replaces the current, as sometimes it might be handy to have both objects as well as the intersection after the calculation. Adding a deep copy of my first object seems unnecessarily complex as the resulting intersection will always be given by the return. I just want to understand if that is intentionally or if it would be possible to add an optional inplace=True option to intersect, which then can be used to not change the rect object inplace. Any enlightenment will be appreciated.

Example

import fitz

rect1 = fitz.Rect(0,0,1,1)
rect2 = fitz.Rect(2,0,3,1)

print(f"Rect1: {rect1}")
print(f"Rect2: {rect2}")

inter = rect1.intersect(rect2)
print(f"Itersection: {inter}")
print(f"Rect1: {rect1}")
print(f"Rect2: {rect2}")

Rect1: Rect(0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0)
Rect2: Rect(2.0, 0.0, 3.0, 1.0)
Itersection: Rect(2.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0)
Rect1: Rect(2.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0)
Rect2: Rect(2.0, 0.0, 3.0, 1.0)

You can see in the output, that rect1 will get replaced by the intersection. This reflects what is written in the documentation, but deletes information from rect1 to have the information of the intersection twice.

System Info (for reproduction purposes, if needed):

3.11.4 (main, Jun 7 2023, 10:13:09) [GCC 12.2.0]
linux

PyMuPDF 1.22.5: Python bindings for the MuPDF 1.22.2 library.
Version date: 2023-06-21 00:00:01.
Built for Python 3.11 on linux (64-bit).

[JorjMcKie]

You in fact have all freedom you need - just use the notation that suits you best.

1. This r1.intersect(r2) logic is the same as implemented in the base library.
2. There exists algebra notation for all geometry objects which lets you say r = r1 & r2. Here, the two original rectangles remain unchanged.
3. You can also write r1 = r1 & r2 which obviously replaces r1 with result and is exactly the same as r1 &= r2 and corresponds to r1.intersect(r2).