On 2007-10-26, Guido van Rossum wrote: > 2007/10/26, Oleg Broytmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > On Fri, Oct 26, 2007 at 09:48:28AM -0400, Chris Monson wrote: > > [quoting Mark Summerfield] > > > > 'd' - Decimal Integer. Outputs the number in base 10. > > > > [skip] > > > > > 'd' - Denary Integer. Outputs the number in base 10. > > > > -1. I know what "decimal integers" are, but never heard about "denary" > > (my spellchecker complains, too).
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/denary > -1 indeed. What's wrong with binary, octal, decimal, hexademimal? If it was logical it would be 'b', 'o', 'd', 'h', not 'b', 'o', 'd', 'x'. Why use x rather than h for hexadecimal? Because it is an established convention. Of course 'd' is an established convention too, but in the end the C standard adopted 'i' as an alternative because people _expect_ an 'i' to be there and to mean integer. (Surely it is only old C programmers who learnt C before 'i' was available use 'd' these days.) And decimal may lead people new to Python to think decimal.Decimal is intended, or at least that a decimal number (i.e., one with a fractional part) is expected. I think the right solution is to use 'i' - Integer. Outputs the number in base 10. because I think people assume base 10 for integers unless told otherwise, whereas "decimal" is ambiguous, is it a base 10 integer or a decimal floating point number. Both C and C++ accept both 'i' and 'd' (and I think accepting both is fine although that goes against TOOWTDI), but having to use 'd' somehow seems like a retrograde step reminding me of when I started programming in C many years ago---something I thought I'd escaped:-) -- Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd., www.qtrac.eu _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
