[Python-ideas] Floating point contexts in Python core

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Steven D'Aprano writes:
 > On 12/10/12 03:05, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > > Steven D'Aprano writes:
 > >
 > >   >  I would gladly give up a small amount of speed for better control
 > >   >  over floats, such as whether 1/0.0 raised an exception or
 > >   >  returned infinity.
 > >
 > > Isn't that what the fpectl module is supposed to buy, albeit much less
 > > pleasantly than Decimal contexts do?
 > 
 > 
 > I can't test it, because I don't have that module installed, but I would
 > think not.
 > 
 > Reading the docs:
 > 
 > http://docs.python.org/library/fpectl.html
 > 
 > I would say that fpectl exists to turn on floating point exceptions where
 > Python currently returns an inf or NaN, not to turn on special values
 > where Python currently raises an exception, e.g. 1/0.0.

OK.  But if Python does that, it must be checking the value of the
operand as well as the type.  Surely that could be delegated to the
hardware easily by commenting out one line.  (Of course that would
need to be a build-time option, and requires care in initialization.)

 > Because it depends on a build-time option, using it is even less convenient
 > that most other non-standard libraries.

That is neither here nor there.  I think the people who would use such
facilities are a very small minority; imposing a slight extra burden
on them is not a huge cost to Python.  Eg, I'm perfectly happy with
Python's current behavior because I only write toy examples/classroom
demos in pure Python.  If I were going to try to write statistical
code in Python (vaguely plausible but not likely :-), I'd surely use
SciPy.

 > It only has a single exception type for any of Division by Zero, Overflow
 > and Invalid, and doesn't appear to trap Underflow or Inexact at all. It's
 > not just less pleasant than Decimal contexts, but much less powerful as
 > well.

Now you're really picking nits.  Nobody said fpectl is perfect for all
uses, just that you could get *better* control over floats.  If you're
going to insist that nothing less than Decimal contexts will do,
you're right for you -- but that's not what you said.