I say stick to what we have now: 2.6 signed, 3.0 unsigned. The 2.6 behavior is 100% compatible with 2.5 on 32bit boxes. It is 50% incompatible with 2.5 on 64bit boxes, but it adds 100% compatibility in 2.6 between 32bit and 64bit boxes (and also in 3.0 of course).
On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 11:26 PM, Gregory P. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On 3/19/08, "Martin v. Löwis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Christian Heimes schrieb: > > > > > In Python 3.0 the unit test for zlib is broken because in 3.0 > > > zlib.crc32() returns an unsigned long. But in Python 2.x it's a signed > int. > > > > > > How should the issue be solved? I think the unsigned long is wrong. > > > > > > Here at the sprint people agreed that crc32 *obviously* gives > > an unsigned number. > > > > It's unfortunate that Python 2.6 can't really implement that > > very well, hence we have to keep the 2.x behavior in 2.6. > > In 3k, it should change. > > > > Regards, > > > > Martin > > yes crcs should be unsigned; they're fixed size bit fields. it could even > make sense to return them as a 4 byte bytes/str object but that'd be an API > change. a sign requires you to assume you know the length of the underlying > integer holding it. python ints and longs don't have a fixed size so that > is troublesome and leads to lots of zlib.crc32(foo) & 0xffffffff and > binascii.crc32(foo) & 0xffffffff or other ugly tricks to un-sign the value. > > I could make 2.6 return unsigned but it would mean that it returns a long > half of the time rather than an int. The informal consensus in the room > earlier this week was to leave 2.x returning a signed value for > compatibility (I made it consistent so that it -always- returns a signed > regardless of sizeof(long)). i'd be happy either way. > > My recent checkin should have fixed the py3k tests and got them returning > unsigned again. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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/guido%40python.org > > -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ 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
