On Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:30:43 am Raymond Hettinger wrote: > The format is already close to the C99 notation > but replaces the 'p' with '* 2.0 **' which I find to > be both readable and self-explanatory.
Since we're talking about what's "readable and self-explanatory", I find that jarring, unexpected, unintuitive, and mathematically bizarre (even if it is the convention in some areas). It's like writing '123 * A.0 ** -2' for 1.23. And putting spaces around the operators is ugly. I'd like to mention that what bin() et al is actually doing is not so much returning a binary number string but returning a hybrid binary/decimal arithmetic expression. So bin() returns a binary number string for int arguments, and an expression for float arguments: these are conceptually different kinds of things, even if they're both strings. Frankly, I'd be much happier if the API (whatever it is) returned a tuple of (binary string, base int, exponent int), and let users write their own helper function to format it any way they like. Or failing that, the p notation used by Java and C99. (And yes, mixing decimal exponents with binary mantissas upsets me too, but somehow it's less upsetting.) -- Steven _______________________________________________ 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
