On 11/10/12 16:45, Greg Ewing wrote:
Alexander Belopolsky wrote:
I gave this idea +float('inf') in the other thread and was thinking about it since. I am now toying with the idea to unify float and decimal in Python.
Are you sure there would be any point in this? People who specifically *want* base-2 floats are probably quite happy with the current float type, and wouldn't appreciate having it slowed down, even by a small amount.
I would gladly give up a small amount of speed for better control over floats, such as whether 1/0.0 raised an exception or returned infinity. If I wanted fast code, I'd be using C. I'm happy with *fast enough*. For example, 1/0.0 in a continued fraction is generally harmless, provided it returns infinity. If it raises an exception, you have to write slow, ugly code to evaluate continued fractions robustly. I wouldn't expect 1/0.0 -> infinity to becomes the default, but I'd like a runtime switch to turn it on and off as needed. -- Steven