Guido van Rossum wrote:
On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Mark Dickinson <dicki...@gmail.com> wrote:
In a recent #python-dev IRC conversation, it was suggested that we
should consider backporting the new-style float repr from py3k to
trunk.  I'd like to get people's opinions on this idea.
[...]
Possible problems:

 - breaking docstrings in third party code.  Though Eric reminded me
  that when we implemented this for 3.1, there were essentially no
  standard library test breakages resulting from the changed repr
  format.

I think you mean doctests? These are the primary reason I've always
been hesitant to change this in 2.x.

I think that doctests inherently unsuited to testing floating point algorithms. Leaving aside the platform differences in actual floating point arithmetic that cause minute real differences in the results, Python 2.x relies on string conversion routines which give different doctest results on different platforms. Using a consistent routine would actually improve the ability to use doctests in that one regard. It certainly would make writing examples much more consistent, particularly for those of us that use infs and nans frequently.

--
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco

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