[Python-Dev] Unifying Long Integers and Integers: baseint (original) (raw)

Michael Chermside mcherm at mcherm.com
Wed Aug 11 23:02:26 CEST 2004

> Is there a plan for implementing a base class for int and long (like > basestring for str and unicode): > > >>> issubclass(int, baseint) and issubclass(long, baseint) > True > > ?

I think this would be a good idea; maybe the name should be baseinteger?

I would like to urge caution before making this change. Despite what the PEP may say, I actually think that creating a 'baseint' type is the WRONG design choice for the long term. I envision an eventual Python which has just one type, called 'int'. The fact that an efficient implementation is used when the ints are small and an arbitrary-precision version when they get too big would be hidden from the user by automatic promotion of overflow. (By "hidden" I mean the user doesn't need to care, not that they can't find out if they want to.) We are almost there already, but if people start coding to 'baseinteger' it takes us down a different path entirely. 'basestring' is a completely different issue -- there will always be a need for both unicode and 8-bit-strings as separate types.

-- Michael Chermside

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