[Python-Dev] Decimal data type issues (original) (raw)

Tim Delaney tcdelaney at optusnet.com.au
Fri Apr 16 04:01:22 EDT 2004

Edward Loper wrote:

As long as the limits are soft (and can be changed), I won't object too strenuously, because someone who wanted extremely large/small numbers could use them. But...

- I do believe that there will be use cases for exponents outside this range. Just because there's no physical quantities that are reasonably measured with these numbers, doesn't mean that there won't be abstract quantities that are reasonably measured with huge numbers.

There's no reason that if these use cases become common enough to care about, that a future version of Python couldn't increase or eliminate the limits. It's a lot easier to remove limits (e.g. the int/long unification) than to add them.

I'm +0 on having the limits there initially, even if they complicate the implementation somewhat. I'm highly unlikely to ever encounter them, just as I've never produced a long large enough to cause problems.

Tim Delaney

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