[Python-Dev] Re: long formatting

[Guido van Rossum]

I just skimmed the pipermail python-dev archives and found one item
to pronounce on: what "%o" should do with negative longs.  I agree
with Tim.  Also for "%x".  Reason: this matches oct() and hex().

>>> oct(-10L)
'-012L'
>>> oct(-10)
'037777777766'
>>> hex(-10L)
'-0xAL'
>>> hex(-10)
'0xfffffff6'
>>> 

Compatibility be damned (in this case).

(One could argue that for plain ints, the same result are desirable;
however when these are used as bitmasks, I as human reader prefer to
see '0xfffffff6' rather than '-0xA'.  Ah the insanity of consistency!)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)