On 04 dicembre 2008 alle ore 10:37 AM, Adam Olsen
Intuitively, you'd think it's more correct, but for non-trivial usage I see no reason for it to be. The strongest arguments on [1] seem to be controllable precision and stricter standards. Controllable precision works just as well in a library. Stricter standards (ie very portable semantics) could be done with base-2 floats via software emulating on all platforms (and throwing performance out the window).
Do you have some use cases that are (completely!) correct in decimal, and not in base-2 floating point? Something not trivial (emulating a schoolbook, writing a calculator, etc.)
I see Decimal as a modest investment for a mild return. Not worth the effort to switch.
But at least it will be more usable to have a short-hand for decimal declaration: a = 1234.5678d is simplier than: import decimal a = decimal.Decimal('1234.5678') or: from decimal import Decimal a = Decimal('1234.5678') Cheers Cesare