[Python-Dev] Adventures with Decimal

[Guido van Rossum]

Maybe they just meant it as an explanation of "standard form",
clarifying that -0 is turned into +0? (That's what adding 0 does,
right?)

On 5/20/05, Tim Peters <tim.peters at gmail.com> wrote:
> [Tim Peters]
> > ...
> > Other important implementations of the standard didn't
> > make this mistake; for example, Java's BigDecimal
> > (java.lang.String) constructor follows the rules here:
> >
> >    http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimalj/deccons.html
> 
> Hmm -- or maybe it doesn't!  The text says:
> 
>     The BigDecimal constructed from the String is in a
>     standard form, as though the add method had been
>     used to add zero to the number with unlimited
>     precision.[1]
> 
> and I read "add zero" as "applies context".  But then it says
> "unlmited precision".  I'm not at all sure what it means now.
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-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)