[Python-Dev] proposal: add basic money type to the standard library (original) (raw)

M.-A. Lemburg mal@lemburg.com
Tue, 26 Feb 2002 22:32:31 +0100

Guido van Rossum wrote:

> A decimal would do as well, I suppose, at least in > terms of storing the raw value. The reason for trying > to come up with a monetary type is to make operations between > monetary values having two different currencies illegal. > Coercion between two of those would always have to be > made explicit (for obvious reasons). Are you sure you're trying to solve a real problem here? There are lots of operations on monetary values that make no sense (try multiplying two amounts of money).

Indeed, monetary types solve different problems than decimal types. Financial applications do have a need for these kind of implicit error checks.

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