[Python-ideas] 1_000_000

[Cameron Simpson]

On 06May2011 19:55, Calvin Spealman <ironfroggy at gmail.com> wrote:
| I am +0 on the whole idea, but +0.5 if is not an underscore, which I
| think is ugly.

I think the underscore is one of the better choices:

  - it is very visible, unlike a dot or comma

  - it is "low" or "flat", not intruding into the glyph space of the
    digits, leaving things easy to read

  - it is already widely used (perl (sorry), Ada (where I first
    encountered it now that someone ele has mentioned it, etc)
    i.e. it is a pre-existing idom with successful use

| Would it conflict with any other syntax rules if
| numbers allowed a space separator?
| 
| for i in range(1 111 111):
|     foo(i)
| 
| It looks cleaner and in a fixed-font should be just as obvious about
| separator placement.

I'm very -1 on this one. Like another recent proposal it take a common
typing error and turns it into legal syntax. Code that once would fail
to compile because the author dropped a comma between values now runs,
with silent breakage (the new stuff isn't even the wrong type!)

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers.  :-)
        - Larry Wall regarding 10_000_000 in <11556 at jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>