[Python-Dev] Expert floats (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.one at comcast.net
Fri Apr 2 00:07:33 EST 2004

[Andrew Koenig, on the move-to-wider-platform thing]

... OK, but either that objection is relevant for Python or it isn't.

It's not important to me. It may be important to some Python users now; I don't know. It may be more or less important in the future, because things do change.

... On the other hand, maybe ?!ng is right about the desirable properties of display for people being different from those for marshalling/unmarshalling.

There's no necessary connection between the two, as I've granted for all the years this debate has raged .

OTOH, there's no fixed choice for displaying floats that will make everyone happy all the time, or, I think, even most people happy most of the time. You gave a list of 4 different behaviors you sometimes want. I have my own list, including some not on yours:

Because of this, arguments about repr() and str() are futile, IMO. The flexibility most people want some of the time can't be gotten by changing one fixed behavior for another. This isn't limited to floats, either.

...

Python would love to grab their I/O implementation then <0.8 wink>.

http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/

I think the licensing terms are compatible with Python, if you're serious.

It was considered before, but its portablility to non-Unixish system looks poor, and in particular its Windows story appears to require commercial users to buy a UWIN license.

Guido started on something different in the Python CVS sandbox/sio. I don't think he wrote a design doc, but the thrust is more to make composable filtering streams (like streams that deal with Unicode gracefully, and that hide differences among the different line end conventions (it's increasingly common to have to deal with a variety of file formats on a single box)).

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