[issue27363] Complex with negative zero imaginary part

[Vedran Čačić]

Vedran Čačić added the comment:

Mark, I think it would be a great idea. It would be consistent with both "str is straightforward, repr is reproducible", and with the idea that (evalable) repr is almost always of the form `typename(arguments)`. It would also get rid of that "supefluous-looking" parentheses around the repr, and put them in the right place: a call. :-)

[ On the other hand, I started to think deeply about the reason why we cannot make 1-0j do the right thing, and I'm not so sure anymore. People usually say it's because we don't have separate imaginary type, but we don't need it: all we need is a separate _real_ type, and we have it: float.

When Python subtracts 0j from a float 1.0, there is no absolute imperative that it has to do it in the same way as subtracting 0j from a complex(1.0, 0.0). We _can_ make it so the result of the former is complex(1.0, -0.0), and result of the latter is complex(1.0, 0.0).

Of course, now even the imaginary complex numbers couldn't be outputed simply, and -0 real part should become -0.0, but it might be worth it. I understand it's enormously complicated though, and I'd be satisfied with a "normal" repr. Or a literal_eval that really understand complex numbers' repr. ]

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue27363>
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