[Python-3000] PEP 31XX: A Type Hierarchy for Numbers (and other algebraic entities) (original) (raw)

Bill Janssen janssen at parc.com
Thu Apr 26 19:11:27 CEST 2007

Are the base number operations in Python all that difficult to understand?

Well, they're a little tricky.

But the basic problem with "number" support, in almost every programming language, is that they are too low-level an abstraction. A number in a program is never just an integer or a float. It's always an integer or float (or complex, OK) deployed in support of a very specific purpose. It's a loop index, or a weight in kilos, or the number of calendar entries for a particular day. It often has units, and a fixed range of values or fixed set of values, neither of which are taken into account in most programming languages.

Strings really suffer from the same lack of focus. A string is never just a string. It's a book title, or a filename, or a person's surname, or an email address. It's usually got a particular human language (or computer OS) associated with it. Each of these usages has particular limitations and patterns which limit both its range of values, and the operations which can be successfully applied to it.

Bill

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