-cc: python-dev +cc: python-ideas On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:

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Does this mean we want to re-open the discussion about decimal constants? Last time this came up I think we decided that we wanted to wait for cdecimal (which is obviously here) and work out how to handle contexts,

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 4:26 AM, Brett Cannon wrote: the

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syntax, etc.

Just to throw a crazy idea out: How bad a change would it be to make decimal actually the default?

(Caveat: I've not worked with decimal/cdecimal to any real extent and don't know its limitations etc.)

Painful for existing code, unittests and extension modules. Definitely python-ideas territory (thread moved there with an appropriate subject). I'm not surprised at all that a decimal type can be "fast" in an interpreted language due to the already dominant interpreter overhead. I wish all spreadsheets had used decimals from day one rather than binary floating point (blame Lotus?). Think of the trouble that would have saved the world. -gps