[Python-Dev] SIGCHECK() in longobject.c (original) (raw)

Eric Smith eric at trueblade.com
Tue Oct 20 16:50:07 CEST 2009

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

Mark Dickinson wrote:

This high-precision inefficiency could easily be fixed by using a dedicated 'decimal natural number' extension type for the Decimal coefficient, stored internally in base a suitable power of 10. [...]

Didn't you already start work on that concept with the deccoeff patch? I did: the code can be seen at: http://svn.python.org/view/sandbox/trunk/decimal/decimalinc/ This code defines a Deccoeff type as above, providing base 10 natural number arithmetic, along with a skeletal Decimal type. The work on Deccoeff is pretty much complete, but the Decimal type is only just a beginning; the original intent was to slowly translate the Decimal code into C and move it into the Decimal type. The code was working a few months ago (with all Decimal tests passing), but there have been some changes and bugfixes since then. I might try to resurrect that code, dropping the Decimal type and just concentrating on Deccoeff.

My only concern about this is the effect it would have on IronPython, Jython, PyPy, and other alternate implementations that use the stdlib.

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