[Python-Dev] Decimal(unicode)

[Mark Dickinson]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 9:46 AM, Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.pp.ru> wrote:
>    In 2.5.2 it prints
>
>  <type 'str'>
>  <type 'unicode'>
>
>    Why the change? Is it a bug or a feature? Shouldn't .to_eng_string()
>  always return a str?

I'd call this a bug.  The change is an accident, a side-effect of the fact
that in 2.5.1 the coefficient (mantissa) of a Decimal was stored as a
tuple, and in 2.5.2 it's stored as a string (which greatly improves efficiency).
Clearly in 2.5.2 the mantissa is being stored as a unicode instance in the
second case;  it should be explicitly coerced to str in Decimal.__new__.

If others agree that it's a bug, I'll fix it.

Mark