extracting hex mant+exp from double?

[Tim Peters]

[Mike C. Fletcher, after staring at
    >>> math.frexp(.1)
    (0.80000000000000004, -3)
    >>> m = _[0]
]

> It's a bleeding anonymous magic variable man!  Who let that into the
> language!  The variable is _magic_ I say.  Wizardry! Sorcery!  Appearing
> without explicit assignment!
> Pact-with-the-devil-and-dancing-at-midnight-curses-and-hexes!
> Spawn-of-PERL!
> Magic, I say!
>
> [I spent 2 minutes trying to figure out why you were translating 0, what
> language you were using (base-2-eese?), and what special meaning 0 had
> for translation tables.  How did I miss something so... icky...
> getting added?]
>
> Ick,
> Mike

Hunting this down in CVS, Guido added it in ceval.c, Revision 2.64.2.6, on
Thu Apr 28 12:51:01 1994 UTC.  I agree it's *so* un-Pythonic that Python
really wouldn't be Python without it <wink>.

practicality-beats-purity-ly y'rs  - tim