bltinmodule.c (original) (raw)

Raymond Hettinger python at rcn.com
Thu Jun 26 14:50:31 CEST 2008

Just as a contrary point, I'm not particularly keen on the output format (which takes the form '0b1 * 2.0 ** 0' as far as I can see),

That format was requested by everyone else on the tracker discussion. What I originally wanted was something like 0b11.0101. But that didn't round-trip through eval, it didn't match the style used in the numerical papers referenced by Terry Reedy, and it didn't scale well with inputs like 1.1E+100.

and I'm definitely not keen on the fact that it's overloaded on the hex/bin/oct builtins.

Can't it be a separate function?

Simplicity. bin/oct/hex have the job of giving alternate base representations for numbers. Nothing is gained by adding a duplicate set of functions in the math module for float inputs.

would it not be better if it were machine-parseable, rather than executable?

We already have struct.pack for machine-parseable output. This is supposed to be human readable as well as providing an exact, platform indepent way of specifying a particular float value (something that's useful in testing algorithms like that in math.sum()).

Raymond

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