On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 2:55 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> wrote:
On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:51 AM, Mike Graham <mikegraham@gmail.com> wrote:
The builtin round function is completely useless. I've never seen anyone use it constructively. Usually people using it are new programmers who are not comfortable with or aware of string formatting. Sometimes people use it to poorly replicate functionality that's implemented correctly in the decimal module.
You're probably right. It has ancient ancestry: it was one of the functions I copied directly from ABC. (It's actually more useful now that floats are printed with minimal digits.)
But given the pain of removing a builtin, is it worth it? maybe we can just document the better ways of accomplishing its tasks?
I think it is reasonable with the right justifications, deprecation period, and obvious migration path. Also, I'd be completely in support of dropping round() and agree it gets misused and leads to too much confusion. We should promote the right ways, and some times to show the right path you need to lock another door and throw away the key.
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