On Sat, 08 Oct 2011 08:44:52 -0700 Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> wrote:
Antoine Pitrou wrote:
On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:14:44 -0600 Jeffrey <jss.bulk@gmail.com> wrote:
I would like to suggest adding an integer presentation type for base 36 to PEP 3101. I can't imagine that it would be a whole lot more difficult than the existing types. Python's built-in long integers provide a nice way to prototype and demonstrate cryptographic operations, especially with asymmetric cryptography. (Alice and Bob stuff.) Built-in functions provide modular reduction, modular exponentiation, and lots of nice number theory stuff that supports a variety of protocols and algorithms. A frequent need is to represent a message by a number. Base 36 provides a way to represent all 26 letters in a semi-standard way, and simple string transformations can efficiently make zeros into spaces or vice versa.
Why base 36 rather than, say, base 64 or even base 80?
Because there are 26 ascii letters and 10 ascii digits?
That's not really answering the question. Are people used to reading and manipulating numbers in base 36? If not, why not use the most compact representation? (if you are not interested in the most compact representation, then you can simply use base 10 or 16) Regards Antoine.