[Python-ideas] Floating point contexts in Python core

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 18:45:50 +1300
Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Alexander Belopolsky wrote:
> 
> > I gave this idea +float('inf') in the other thread and was thinking about it
> > since. I am now toying with the idea to unify float and decimal in Python.
> 
> Are you sure there would be any point in this? People who
> specifically *want* base-2 floats are probably quite happy
> with the current float type, and wouldn't appreciate having
> it slowed down, even by a small amount.

Indeed, I don't see the point either. Decimal's strength over float is
to be able to represent *decimal* numbers of arbitrary precision, which
is useful because any common human activity uses base-10 numbers. I
don't see how adding a new binary float type would help any use case.

Regards

Antoine.


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