[Python-Dev] Mixing float and Decimal -- thread reboot (original) (raw)

Glenn Linderman v+python at g.nevcal.com
Sat Mar 20 01:13:54 CET 2010

On 3/19/2010 2:50 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

I'd like to reboot this thread.

I'll go along with that idea!

I've been spinning this topic in my head for most of the morning, and I think we should seriously reconsider allowing mixed arithmetic involving Decimal, not just mixed comparisons. [Quick summary: embed Decimal in the numeric tower but add a context flag to disallow implicit mixing of float and Decimal.]

As long as there is a way to avoid implicit mixing of float and Decimal, or to easily detect (preferably with an exception) the implicit mixing, then I think that solves the concerns of people trying to write numerically correct code using Decimal. And if Mark (or someone) can solve the hashing anomoly problem without huge expense, then it could be a winner.

I tried to find the argumentation against it in PEP 327

Should Aahz be consulted, as some of the objections in PEP 327 are attributed to him, but he is pretty scarce around here these days?

Also, this would be a possible road towards eventually supporting a language extension where floating point literals produce Decimal values instead of binary floats. (A possible syntax could be "from options import decimalfloat", which would work similar to "from future import ..." except it's a permanent part of the language rather than a forward compatibility feature.)

Nice touch here... rather than being forced to quote Decimal values as strings and convert from string, or use a tuple to represent the parts, both of which are warts. Not sure what context would be used, though.

Glenn

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