[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] New pretty printer

[Jim Fulton]

On Feb 7,  4:46pm, Konrad HINSEN wrote:
> Subject: Re: [PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] New pretty printer
>
>    > OK. Then it makes sense to add another parameter for printing
>    > precision and use it also for scalars.
>
>    I'd rather see precision handled as an array attribute.
>
> But it isn't. If precision were an attribute of an object, you would
> expect arithmetic etc. to respect it. But what we are discussing is
> just a matter of output formatting. To be consistent, you would
> also have to require that the radix for integer output be a
> property of an object, creating separate types for decimal and
> hex numbers.
>
> If precision were an attribute, we would also have to decide what the
> precision of the result of an array operation is. This just doesn't
> make sense.

Perhaps precision is a poor term.  "output precision" is fine with me.

My opinion is based on two ideas:

   - The output precision is needed specifically for printing arrays, mainly
     because you have lots of data to output.

   - Global variables are bad.  A correlary is that changes to core things like
     sys is bad. I don't mind output width beig added to sys, because it
clearly      is not array specific.  (Well, maybe I do. :)

Jim

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