[Python-Dev] PEP 3188: Implementation Questions

[Meador Inge]

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>wrote:

> Meador Inge wrote:
>
>  3. Using Decimal keeps the desired precision,
>>
>
> Well, sort of, but then you end up doing arithmetic in
> decimal instead of binary, which could give different
> results.
>

Even with the user-defined precision capabilities of the 'Decimal' class?
In other words, can I create an instance of a 'Decimal' that behaves (in all
operations: arithmetic, comparison, etc...) exactly as the extended double
precision type offered by a given machine?

Maybe the solution is to give ctypes long double objects
> the ability to do arithmetic?
>

Maybe, but then we would have to give all numeric 'ctypes' the ability to do
arithmetic -- which may be more than we want.


-- Meador
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