Against PEP 240

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <5cwR6.103027$eK2.23447802 at news4.rdc1.on.home.com>,
Nick Perkins <nperkins7 at home.com> wrote:
>
>BTW, I have seen the term BCD thrown around, (Binary Coded Decimal)...
>Years ago I learned about BCD being a system that codes 2 decimal
>digits per byte.  Is this still what is meant by BCD?

In a strict sense, yes, but it's also frequently used loosely to refer
to any system where pulling a specific digit is O(1).

>I would think that a modern 'Decimal' type would not use this, but
>something more like base*10^exp, where base and exp are stored as
>binary integers.

One of the prime arguments against this approach is the O(N^2)
binary/decimal conversion time.
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