[Python-Dev] Splitting the PEP for adding a decimal type to Python

[Michel Pelletier]

Michael McLay wrote:
> 
> On Friday 27 July 2001 12:35 pm, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> > I'm not very fond of having multiple dialects.  There are lots of
> > contexts where the dialect in use is not explicitly mentioned
> > (e.g. when people discuss fragments of Python code).
> 
> I'm not fond of dialects when they don't serve a significant purpose.
> However, I believe it would be useful to at least discuss creating a special
> purpose "safe" mode for the Python lexer.  This mode would be attractive to
> newbies and financial programmers.  Calling this a new dialect is an
> overstatement.  It is more like defining a subset of the language that uses a
> special vocabulary for working with decimal types.

I don't know nothin about no number theory, but I did use a simliar
dialect technique to implement a PEP 245 prototype using mobius.  Like
what I've read so far about dpython, it's objects from *.pyi files (a
superset of python) could be easily intermigled with objects from *.py
files.

I'm all for no dialects at large, but some people may find need to
implement new languages on top of python's run time engine.  Especially
people embedding python into specialized applications.  Mobius was a way
to control the python language using the language itself, it would be
cool to have this kind of thing stock in python.

-Michel