Alex Martelli wrote: > > On Apr 21, 2006, at 7:46 AM, Aahz wrote: > >> On Fri, Apr 21, 2006, Mateusz Rukowicz wrote: >> >>> >>> Next thing I would add is multi precision floating point type to >>> the core and fraction type, which in some cases highly improves >>> operations, which would have to be done using floating point instead. >>> Of course, math module will need update to support multi precision >>> floating points, and with that, one could compute asin or any other >>> function provided with math with precision limited by memory and >>> time. It would be also good idea to add function which computes pi >>> and exp with unlimited precision. And last thing - It would be nice >>> to add some number-theory functions to math module (or new one), like >>> prime-tests, factorizations etc. >> >> >> To echo and amplify what Guido said: an excellent project would be to >> rewrite the decimal module in C. Another option would be to pick up >> and >> enhance either of the GMP wrappers: >> >> http://gmpy.sourceforge.net/ >> http://www.egenix.com/files/python/mxNumber.html >> >> That would also deal with your suggestion of rational numbers. > > > GMP is covered by LGPL, so must any such derivative work (presumably > ruling it out for embedding in Python's core itself). That being > said, as gmpy's author, I'd be enthusiastically happy to mentor > anybody who wants to work on gmpy or other multiprecision arithmetic > extension for Python. > Rewriting decimal module in C is not far from my initial idea, and I am quite happy about that, you think it's good idea. If I was doing it, I would write all needed things myself - I am quite experienced in coding multi precision computation algorithms (and all kind of algorithms at all).
>Working with long ints would also be excellent, but I'd hesitate to >tackle that unless Tim Peters volunteers to help (because there may be >special implementation constraints). I am quite confident, that I would be able to make those changes transparently, that is - representation of long int wouldn't change. And as far as I saw in the code it's quite straightforward (actually, it would be strange otherwise). But of course it's up to you. Anyway, I hope it will be possible to add those changes. I guess that's quite enough for SoC project, but I hope, it will be possible to add some of my initial ideas anyway. Best regards, Mateusz Rukowicz. _______________________________________________ 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
