Dec. 3, 2003
5:26 p.m.
So the question is, does long have operations that int doesn't have? And if so, why can't those operations be added to int? And if there's a reason, is it good enough?
Taking into account their difference in representation, a long can support 1<<32, but an int can't.
We're talking about a hypothetical int here where that operation returns 4294967296L. (Not so hypothetical, it's implemented in Python 2.4 in CVS.)
I'm not saying that the "proper" (long) behavior can't be unified into a single type, just giving an example of an operation long supports but int doesn't.
Sorry, your counterexample is rejected. :-) --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)