PyWart: Language missing maximum constant of numeric types!

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 06:52:09 +0530, Fayaz Yusuf Khan wrote:

> On Saturday 25 Feb 2012 12:37:58 AM MRAB wrote:
>> We already have arbitrarily long ints, so there could be a special
>> infinite int singleton (actually, 2 of them, one positive, the other
>> negative).
> Seconded. Although would a wish request to bugs.python.org saying "Allow
> storage of the integer infinity" make any sense to the developers? :P

If you explained it as a pair of special int values, INF and -INF, rather 
than the storage of an infinite-sized integer, it would make perfect 
sense.

But it would also be rejected, and rightly so, as unnecessary complexity 
for the int type. There are already Decimal and float infinities, just 
use one of them. Or make your own, it's not difficult. Publish it on 
ActiveState, and if people flock to use it, then you will have a good 
argument that this is useful and should be part of the Python built-ins.



-- 
Steven