[Python-Dev] Decimal conversion to string

[Greg Ewing]

Aahz <aahz at pythoncraft.com>:

> Right.  Question is, to what extent does "human readable" factor in
> after these criteria?

In the case of Decimal, I think it's fairly clear that

  Decimal("123.45")

is the winner overall, since both the type and value are
unambiguous and easily readable, and it's eval-able
to boot.

On the other hand, I see absolutely zero utility in
displaying the tuple-form of the internals.

>From the point of view of using the interactive interpreter
as a desk calculator, it might be slightly more desirable
to see

  Decimal(123.45)

but that wouldn't be eval-able. For such use it might be
better to have a special calculator-mode interpreter that
took all numeric literals as Decimal and displayed them
unadorned.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+
University of Canterbury,	   | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a	  |
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greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz	   +--------------------------------------+