Mark Dickinson <dickinsm <at> gmail.com> writes: > > On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 9:50 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido <at> python.org> wrote: > > There is one choice which I'm not sure about. Should a mixed > > float/Decimal operation return a float or a Decimal? > > I'll just say that it's much easier to return a Decimal if you want to > be able to make guarantees about rounding behaviour, basically because > floats can be converted losslessly to Decimals. I also like the fact > that the decimal module offers more control (rounding mode, precision, > flags, wider exponent range) than float.
A problem, though, is that decimals are much slower than floats. If you have a decimal creeping in some part of a calculation it could degrade performance quite a bit. Regards Antoine. _______________________________________________ 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
