[Python-ideas] decimal by default

[George Sakkis]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:03 AM, Leonardo Santagada
<santagada at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  On 13/05/2008, at 11:04, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>
>
> > On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 6:52 AM, Joshua Spoerri
> > <joshua.spoerri at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Should decimal be the default for floating period literals?
> > >
> > > E.g.
> > > 1.2 would actually be decimal.Decimal("1.2")
> > > and float(1.2) would be used to get traditional binary float point.
> > >
> >
> > Not in 3.0, there are too many things that are subtly different.
> > Perhaps at some point post 3.0 we can invent a mechanism whereby
> > modules can enable this feature on a per-module basis, and then some
> > number of revisions later we can change the default.
> >
>
>
>  I would be happier with a d in front of the number following the scheme of
> raw strings, either to mean Decimal or to mean Double, or maybe f. This way
> things would work for both cientists and the rest of the users.

I would prefer "from __future__ import default_decimals", with target
version for being enforced the 6.0 or later; we'll all be carrying
quantum laptops by then ;-)

George