[Python-Dev] Base-n integer formatting (original) (raw)

Chermside, Michael mchermside at ingdirect.com
Wed Sep 10 10:30:08 EDT 2003

Yuri:

I think you have some interesting ideas, but this is really not the best place to present them. The newsgroup comp.lang.python, also a mailing list at python-list at python.org, is really the best place to discuss these ideas. Python-dev is intended for discussion about the development of Python. New ideas or language features are best introduced first on c.l.py, then based on the feedback there, written up as a PEP, THEN folks will start discussing it on python-dev as they figure out HOW (and perhaps whether) to implement it. There's an exception -- regular Python developers sometimes introduce ideas on this list, but that's a very short list of people, and it's a bit different, because if they bring it up it's because they're already volunteering to implement it (and probably have a prototype up and running already).

If you'll contact me separately, I'll be glad to give you my thoughts on your suggestions.

-- Michael Chermside

-----Original Message----- From: Yuri Vilmanis [mailto:vilmanis at internode.on.net] Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 8:39 AM To: python-dev at python.org Subject: [Python-Dev] Base-n integer formatting

I have three feature requests for you: no. 1 is quite fundamental, no. 2 would be a 'nice' useful feature and no. 3 is a bit more esoteric, but very useful in certain applications

  1. print formatting for integers is currently only available for octal, hex, and decimal. This seems rather odd, as string to integer conversion is available for bases 2 through 36. End result: when I want to do things in base 6 (rare, but it has happened twice) or much more commonly in binary, I can read the numbers in, but cannot print the results - ie quite useless.

  2. Input and output formatting for unary (which is commonly referred to as base 1, yes, I know it's not 'really' base 1 by the general deinition of base, but "base 1" is the convention) would also be good, as would roman numeral support, especially in word-processing applications or IO from any formatted document with roman page/section numbers

  3. negative bases: I have needed this more times than I think some people would care to imagine. These representations have several very useful properties such as implementation-independent signdness (hence arbirtrary word length), and some more interesting properties I won't expand on here.

Context: I find python very handy not only as a programming/scripting language but also as a scratchpad for various number theory investigations. Unfortunately the output formatting leaves all but the most basic investigations out in the cold, and lack of negative base input/output makes it harder to use python to look for certain patterns in result sets, not to mention getting the data in...

Thanks, Yuri

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