Does Python need a '>>>' operator?

[Martin v. Loewis]

David Eppstein <eppstein at ics.uci.edu> writes:

> > Unfortunately, you cannot represent such a number in hex, atleast not
> > under any of the usual conventions
[...]
> I don't understand why not.
[...]
> 
> Similarly, the obvious and only way of representing a negative number in 
> hex is to write a minus sign followed by the hex string for the absolute 
> value of the number.

Right; this representation is natural for me as well. However, people
were objecting that hex() should not produce a sign: *that* is not
possible following the usual conventions.

> The "usual" way of representing 32-bit values in hex, ffff0123 etc, has 
> nothing to do with negative numbers, it is a way of representing 
> unsigned values.  Since Python doesn't have unsigned values, we 
> shouldn't do things that way.

I completely agree.

Regards,
Martin