monetary applications [was: Python GUI app to impress the bos s?]

[Alex Martelli]

On Wednesday 18 September 2002 04:34 pm, Simon Brunning wrote:
> > From:	Alex Martelli [SMTP:aleax at aleax.it]
> >
> > > Perhaps the lack of a FixedPoint type?
> >
> > http://starship.python.net/crew/aahz/FixedPoint.py
>
> A candidate for the standard library, perhaps? I use it all the time, and

Definitely (Aahz's Decimal may be a better alternative), but it needs a
paladin to convince the BDFL to include it in the core.  Right now, it
seems to me that FixedPoint and Decimal are not even among the
most popular extensions -- Numeric, mxDateTime and other Lemburg
extensions, and many others, seem to be vastly more popular.

> if nothing else, it would be nice for DB-API modules to know that it was
> there, so that they could return instances of it for NUMERIC and DECIMAL
> values.

To play devil's advocate: DB-API compliant modules have long used
mxDateTime happily, for date-time values, even though mxDateTime
was not (and likely will never be) in the core.  Why is FixedPoint (or
Decimal or some future Currency -- whatever) different from mxDateTime
in this regard?  How come DB-API compliant modules seem not to
even have felt any need to fish around for a type with which to
represent NUMERIC and DECIMAL, as they did for dates and times?

I don't know the answers, but if "help out the DB-API" is among the
arguments you plan to muster to convince the BDFL, you might
want to be prepared in case these questions get raised.  No, sorry,
I won't volunteer as a paladin for this PEP -- I'll gladly help out with
code and even drafting the PEP if need be, but this isn't really my
own crusade...


Alex