[Python-Dev] Fwd: Change in repr of Decimal in 2.6 (original) (raw)

Karen Tracey kmtracey at gmail.com
Sat Jul 19 05:59:49 CEST 2008

Meant to copy list on reply, sorry.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Karen Tracey <kmtracey at gmail.com> Date: Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 11:48 PM Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] Change in repr of Decimal in 2.6 To: Raymond Hettinger <python at rcn.com>

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 11:19 PM, Raymond Hettinger <python at rcn.com> wrote:

From: Karen Tracey

I noticed when trying out Python's 2.6b2 release that the repr of Decimal has changed since 2.5. On 2.5: ... quotes were used whereas on 2.6b2: ... single quotes are used. Searching around I see this was done in r60773 with the log message: Fix decimal repr which should have used single quotes like other reprs.

but I can't find any discussion other than that. Guido requested this change so that the Decimal repr would match the style used elsewhere (i.e. str(7) --> '7').

Thanks for the background. Can't say I ever noticed the inconsistency myself.

If it's here to stay, is there some straightforward way that I am unaware of to construct tests that use Decimal repr but will work correctly on Python 2.3-2.6?

A quick hack is to monkey patch the decimal module: >>> import decimal >>> decimal.Decimal.repr = lambda s: 'Decimal("%s")' % str(s)

That is quick, but does seem hackish.

A better fix is to amend to doctests to not rely on the repr format. Instead of:

>>> Decimal('7.1') Decimal("7.1") use: >>> print Decimal('7.1') 7.1

Yeah, but the testcases are not quite that simple. They're often testing return values from functions and as much verifying that the type is correct as the value, so I think I'd have to change stuff like:

f.clean('1') Decimal("1")

to:

x = f.clean('1') print type(x), x <class 'decimal.Decimal'> 1

right?

Thanks for the answer, Karen -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20080718/0fbbfe7e/attachment-0001.htm>

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