[Python-Dev] Cannot declare the largest integer literal.

[Christian Tismer]

Greg Stein wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 8 May 2000, Christian Tismer wrote:
> >...
> > > So long as negative literals don't exist in the grammar, "-2147483648" makes
> > > no sense on a 2's-complement machine with 32-bit C longs.  There isn't "a
> > > problem" here worth fixing, although if there is <wink>, it will get fixed
> > > by magic as soon as Python ints and longs are unified.
> >
> > I'd change the grammar.
> 
> That would be very difficult, with very little positive benefit. As Mark
> said, use 0x80000000 if you want that number.
> 
> Consider that the grammar would probably want to deal with things like
>   - 1234
> or
>   -0xA
> 
> Instead, the grammar sees two parts: "-" and "NUMBER" without needing to
> complicate the syntax for NUMBER.

Right. That was the reason for my first, dumb, proposal:
Always interpret a number as negative and negate it once more.
That makes it positive. In a post process, remove double-negates.
This leaves negations always where they are allowed: On negatives.

ciao - chris

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