[Python-Dev] Base-n integer formatting

[Yuri Vilmanis]

I have three feature requests for you: no. 1 is quite fundamental, no. 2 would 
be a 'nice' useful feature and no. 3 is a bit more esoteric, but very useful 
in certain applications

1) print formatting for integers is currently only available for octal, hex, 
and decimal. This seems rather odd, as string to integer conversion is 
available for bases 2 through 36. End result: when I want to do things in 
base 6 (rare, but it has happened twice) or much more commonly in binary, I 
can read the numbers in, but cannot print the results - ie quite useless. 

2) Input and output formatting for unary (which is commonly referred to as 
base 1, yes, I know it's not 'really' base 1 by the general deinition of 
base, but "base 1" is the convention) would also be good, as would roman 
numeral support, especially in word-processing applications or IO from any 
formatted document with roman page/section numbers

3) negative bases: I have needed this more times than I think some people 
would care to imagine. These representations have several very useful 
properties such as implementation-independent signdness (hence arbirtrary 
word length), and some more interesting properties I won't expand on here.

Context: I find python very handy not only as a programming/scripting language 
but also as a scratchpad for various number theory investigations. 
Unfortunately the output formatting leaves all but the most basic 
investigations out in the cold, and lack of negative base input/output makes 
it harder to use python to look for certain patterns in result sets, not to 
mention getting the data in...

Thanks,
	Yuri