[Python-Dev] Sort out formatting differences in decimal and float
Daniel Fetchinson
fetchinson at googlemail.com
Sat Dec 5 15:00:34 CET 2009
> Sorry for being a curmudgeon, however...
>
> >>> format(Decimal(1234), '020,g')
> '0,000,000,000,001,234'
> >>> format(Decimal(1234), '0=20,g')
> '0000000000000001,234'
>
> Why in the world would you ever want to insert commas as separators and not
> use them consistently?
>
> >>> format(Decimal('nan'), '020,g')
> ' NaN'
> >>> format(Decimal('nan'), '0=20,g')
> '00000000000000000NaN'
>
> Why in the world would you ever want to zero pad Nan (or Inf, for that
> matter)?
Because you didn't know in advance that the number ending up in your
format call was a nan (or inf)?
Cheers,
Daniel
> Stefan> The advantage of decimal is that the user has the option to
> Stefan> suppress commas. The behaviour of float is slightly easier to
> Stefan> implement in C.
>
> Why? If the user asked for them why would you want to suppress (some of)
> them?
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