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

Brett C. bac at OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Thu Aug 19 23:42:00 CEST 2004

Michael Chermside wrote:

if the only reason for it is to use isinstance?

So that an extension author could write an int-like type deriving from it? But didn't you just say that people shouldn't be deriving their own int-like types from baseinteger? Indeed, in general they shouldn't. But for specialized purposes it might be needed (that's why I emphasized could). I call YAGNI. We're talking about creating the class baseinteger which might be useful ONLY for people creating new kinds of integers in Python which will NOT extend int or long but WILL need to be treated just like integers. Who is really likely to do that? And if in the process we introduce a new class which won't be needed in the long run (ie Python 3000 has just one type, called "int" and has no need for baseinteger). So I maintain that it's not needed (and is, in fact, confusing to users) unless someone has a real use case.

I'm with Michael on this. We have gone this long without having a need for a baseinteger type (when was long introduced?) so I don't see a need to add it now. Let's just live with the dichotomy until Python 3000 (moving over to 3000 as Guido suggested in the "PEP 3000" thread) comes out.

-Brett

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