[Python-ideas] Python Numbers as Human Concept Decimal System

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 6:13 AM, Mark H. Harris <harrismh777 at gmail.com> wrote:
>      But, you are correct that what is "really" wanted --someday-- is to
> have
> the literal be decimal (rather than float) to begin with.
>
> Neither here nor there, step at a time over time is better than simple
> status quo.
>
> Please let me be clear, I think Guido's proposal is a very good first step.
> It makes
> sense for the most users (esp naive ones) and does not interfere with
> advanced users.

It's probably time someone [1] wrote up a PEP about all this. The most
important points, as I see it, are:

1) Create a new Decimal literal notation - 1.234d seems to be the most
popular syntax. This is reasonably uncontroversial, but it has
consequences.
2) Create a new float literal notation - 1.234f or 1.234r or any of
the other proposals.
3) Possibly change repr(float) to include the tag.
4) Introduce a "from __future__ import decimal_literals" (named to
parallel unicode_literals - you can get a u"literal" without that
directive, but the default literal type becomes unicode)
5) What about int/int? Should that now be Decimal? Should it be per-module???
6) Further cans of worms like #5

Introducing 1/2/4 would let you stick the future directive into
PYTHONSTARTUP and then run Python as an interactive decimal
calculator.

ChrisA

[1] Not it!