[New-bugs-announce] [issue46852] Remove float.__get_format__() and float.__set_format__()

[STINNER Victor]

New submission from STINNER Victor <vstinner at python.org>:

It has been decided to require IEEE 754 to build Python 3.11:
https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/thread/J5FSP6J4EITPY5C2UJI7HSL2GQCTCUWN/

At Python startup, _PyFloat_InitState() checks the IEEE 754 format at runtime. It can be changed using float.__get_format__() and  float.__set_format__() methods.

These methods docstrings say that they only exist to test Python itself:

"You probably don't want to use this function. It exists mainly to be used in Python's test suite."

These methods are private and not documented.

I propose to remove them.

Once they will be removed, it will become possible to move the detection of the IEEE 754 format in the build step (./configure script) rather than doing the detection at runtime (slower). It would remove an "if" in _PyFloat_Pack4() and _PyFloat_Pack8(), and allow to specialize these functions for the detected format at build time. These functions are used by serialization formats: marshal, pickle and struct.

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components: Interpreter Core
messages: 413943
nosy: vstinner
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Remove float.__get_format__() and  float.__set_format__()
versions: Python 3.11

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue46852>
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