[Python-Dev] New operations in Decimal

[Nick Maclaren]

Facundo Batista <facundo at taniquetil.com.ar> wrote:
> 
> > Am I losing my marbles, or is this a proposal to add the logical
> > operations to FLOATING-POINT?
> 
> Sort of. This is a proposal to keep compliant with the General Decimal
> Arithmetic Specification, as we promised.
>         
>   http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/

Or, more precisely:

http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/damisc.html

All right.  Neither you nor I have lost our marbles, but the authors
of that assuredly did.  It's totally insane.  And implementing it for
a software emulation of that specification built on top of a twos
complement binary integer model is insanity squared.

But promises are promises and mere insanity is not in itself an
obstacle to political success ....

I shall attempt to forget that I ever asked the question :-)



Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email:  nmm1 at cam.ac.uk
Tel.:  +44 1223 334761    Fax:  +44 1223 334679