> Does it really need to be argued interminably that deviating from a > standard is a Big Deal?
The word deviate inaccurately suggests that we do not have a compliant method which, of course, we do. There are two methods, one context aware and the other context free. The proposal is to change the behavior of the context free version, treat it as a bug, and alter it in the middle of a major release. The sole argument resembles bible thumping. Now for a tale. Once upon a time, one typed the literal 1.1 but ended up with the nearest representable value, 1.1000000000000001. The representation error monster terrorized the land and there was much sadness. >From the mists of Argentina, a Palidan set things right. The literal 1.1 became representable and throughout the land the monster was believed to have been slain. With their guard down, no one thought twice when a Zope sorcerer had the bright idea that long literals like 1.1000000000000001 should no longer be representable and should implicitly jump to the nearest representable value, 1.1. Thus the monster arose like a Phoenix. Because it was done in a bugfix release, without a PEP, and no public comment, the citizens were caught unprepared and faced an eternity dealing with the monster so valiantly assailed by the Argentine. Bible thumping notwithstanding, this change is both unnecessary and undesirable. Implicit rounding in the face of explicit user input to the contrary is a bad idea. Internally, the implementation relies on the existing behavior so it is not easily changed. Don't do it. Raymond _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
