[Python-Dev] other "magic strings" issues

Dan Sugalski dan at sidhe.org
Mon Nov 10 11:18:10 EST 2003


On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote:

>
> Dan Sugalski writes:
>  > Digits change for Unicode as well. Plus they get potentially...
>  > interesting in some cases, where the digit-ness of a character is arguably
>  > contextually driven, but I think that can be ignored. Most of the time, at
>  > least.
>
> That depends on how we define "digits" for this purpose.  I've always
> thought of the *digits strings as true constants; other may disagree.

Fair enough. The languages that use non-latin alphabets all have
characters for digits, though many allow the use latin digits as well. I
suppose it's a matter of taste as to whether the non-latin digit
characters are treated as true digits or not.

There's also the issue of interpreting numeric constants in
general if you open up the set of digits with Unicode--it could be
considered odd to allow kanji characters that are tagged as digits to not
be considered digits for numeric constants or string->number conversions.

					Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
dan at sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
                                      teddy bears get drunk




More information about the Python-Dev mailing list