proposed language change to int/int==float (was: PEP0238 lament)

[Chris Barker]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > Scheme says and reveals nothing about internal representations.
> 
> Neither does Python, IMO.
> 
> --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

hmmm. The Python docs are full of phrases like:

"depends on the implimentation of the underlying C library"

And from the refernce manual:

"""
Floating point numbers:
These represent machine-level double precision floating point numbers.
You are at the mercy of the underlying machine architecture and C
implementation for the accepted range and handling of overflow.
"""

I don't know if this is "saying and revealing" _something_, or an
extreme version of _nothing_, but it certainly ties Python behaviour to
internal representation. I understand the practical reasons for using
the underlying machine and C library methods and representations, but it
sure would be nice to have it clearly defined for Python itself,
instead.

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker,
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