[Python-ideas] Floating point contexts in Python core

[Mark Adam]

>>> 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.
>>
>> Umm, you would be giving up a *lot* of speed.  Native floating point
>> happens right in the processor, so if you want special behavior, you'd
>> have to take the floating point out of hardware and into "user space".
>
> Even in user-space, you're not giving up that much speed in practical
> terms, at least not for my needs. The new decimal module in Python 3.3 is
> less than a factor of 10 times slower than Python's floats, which makes it
> pretty much instantaneous to my mind :)

Hmm, well, if it's only that much slower, then we should implement
Rationals and get rid of the issue altogether.

Mark