On Sat, May 15, 2021 at 4:18 AM Martin Teichmann <martin.teichmann@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Chris, Hi List,

having slept over it, I think I have to take back my offer to write a PEP. Why? Well, I am actually sure that it will get rejected anyways.

[SNIP]

I see that you would like to sum up the discussion in a PEP so you can point future requesters there. But given that there are repeatedly requests here, and over at sympy I learned they even wrote a pre-parser, not to forget André's efforts presented here, shows that there seems to be an actual need.

Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. 

I implemented this 1) because I find it fun to experiment with unusual syntax, and, more importantly 2) because this idea (literal fractions, and similarly for literal decimal) often comes up on this list and we get abstract discussions about the (supposed) benefit of such syntax.  I personally find that actual experimentation with working code is often much more illuminating when it comes to highlighting the strength and weaknesses of proposals compared with near-endless mostly abstract discussions often based on preconceived opinions (at least, that's how I interpret them).

I definitely do not believe that there is a need for fraction literals in Python, and even less when it comes to having "fractions by default" without special syntax (or, even worse in my opinion, with syntax that rely on space surrounding operators.)  Again, sorry if I gave the wrong impression.

A while ago, I attempted to summarize various discussions on having literal decimals in Python, with the thought of doing the same for fraction literals, but did not finish. For those curious, the "summary" so far can be found at https://github.com/aroberge/python-ideas-summaries/blob/master/literal-number-types.md  I do think that, if I (or someone else) could complete this summary, it would be worthwhile writing a PEP and, if it is rejected, we could refer people to it rather than restarting a new discussion thread on such recurring topic.  Rejected PEPs can potentially be huge time savers for the community ...

André Roberge


 
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