[Python-Dev] Re: PEP239 (Rational Numbers) Reference Implementation and new issues

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "TW" == Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net> writes:

    TW> I have to agree with MAL. I know, rationally, why a rational
    TW> literal (or is it literal rational ?) is desirable, but it
    TW> feels like clutter and all of the proposed syntactic solutions
    TW> strike me as bad ideas. I'd much rather have the above (which
    TW> deals with everyone else's favorite data type and their
    TW> requests to have builtin support for it at the same time) than
    TW> a not-quite-perfect way to spell a rational literally.

It seems to me that Python has a tradition of deferring syntax
decisions until way after the more important issues have been
worked out.  Perhaps we should do the same here, IOW, get the rational
library into the core and see if a rational literal makes that big a
difference for readability or maintainability.  It may not, but then
at least we'll still have rationals.

-Barry