[Python-Dev] Inspiration

[Greg Stein]

On Sat, 22 Apr 2000, Moshe Zadka wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Apr 2000, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/04/whatsnew.html
> 
> OK, here's my summary of the good things we should copy:
> 
> (In that order:)
> 
> -- Weak references (as weak dictionaries? would "w{}" to signify a weak
>    dictionary is alright parser-wise?)
> -- Binary numbers -- way way cool (and doesn't seem to hard -- need to
>    patch the tokenizer, PyLong_FromString and PyOS_strtoul: anything
>    I've missed?)

Yet another numeric format? eek. If anything, we should be dropping octal,
rather than adding binary.

You want binary? Just use int("10010", 2). No need for more syntax.

I'd go for weak objects (proxies) rather than weak dictionaries.
Duplicating the dict type just to deal with weak refs seems a bit much.
But I'm not a big brain on this stuff -- I tend to skip all the
discussions people have had on this stuff. I just avoid the need for
circular refs and weak refs :-)

Most of the need for weak refs would disappear with some simple form of GC
installed. And it seems we'll have that by 1.7.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/