[Python-Dev] Adventures with Decimal

[Greg Ewing]

Raymond Hettinger wrote:
> Did you see Mike Cowlishaw's posting where he described why he took our
> current position (wysiwig input) in the spec, in Java's BigDecimal, and
> in Rexx's numeric model?

Yes, it appears that you have channeled him correctly
on that point, and Tim hasn't. :-)

But I also found it interesting that, while the spec
requires the existence of a context for each operation,
it apparently *doesn't* mandate that it must be kept
in a global variable, which is the part that makes me
uncomfortable.

Was there any debate about this choice when the Decimal
module was being designed? It seems to go against
EIBTI, and even against Mr. Cowlishaw's own desire
for WYSIWIG, because WYG depends not only on what
you can see, but a piece of hidden state as well.

Greg