On 3/14/07, Raymond Hettinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> - In 3.0, we don't want an exception. With floats and decimals, leading
> zeroes are allowed (i.e. 0.123). In 3.0, I would like the leading zero
> distinction to disappear from our collective memory. Somelike like
> eval('00987') should give 987, not an exception. The use cases for zfill()
> correspond to the cases where leading zeros are meaningfully interpreted as
> decimals (this includes phone and social security numbers, account numbers,
> and whatnot).
This is the only part I'm not sure I agree with. I agree it would be
nice if there were no collective memory, but it is etched into the
collective memory, and anybody who uses C or some other language as
well as Python is living that collective memory on a daily basis and
could easily do the wrong thing (either in Python or in the other
language). We are removing the ability to specify an octal number via
a leading 0, because it caused confusion. I think adding the ability
to specify a decimal number with a leading 0 has the potential to
cause confusion in a completely different group of users. And it
doesn't seem to be something people are clamoring for in a major way.
In fact, I would go so far as to argue that the behavior of int()
should be changed as well:
int('012') -> exception (used to return 12)
int('012', 0) -> exception (used to return 10)
int('012', 10) -> should return 12, like always
So for your use-cases: 1) you shouldn't hard code an SSN into the
program; 2) you shouldn't use eval() on user data; and 3) you should
call int() with a second parameter of 10 to get what you want.
Regards,
Pat
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