Type hierarchy

[Gerrit Holl]

Hi,

currently, almost all types directly inherit from object. The only
exceptions are string and unicode, which inherit from basestring.
But wouldn't a type hierarchy be very useful for other types as
well? For example, checking whether something is a number, currently
needs isinstance(o, int) or isinstance(o, long), or float... although
ints and longs are going to be the same. Would it be wise to let those
have common base types?

For example:

object
 |
 +-- sequence
 |    |
 |    +-- immutable
 |    |    |
 |    |    +-- basestring
 |    |    |    |
 |    |    |    +-- string
 |    |    |    +-- unicode
 |    |    |
 |    |    +-- tuple
 |    |
 |    +-- mutable
 |         |
 |         +-- list
 |         +-- array
 |
 +-- mapping
 |    |
 |    +-- dict
 |
 +-- number
 |    |
 |    +-- int
 |         +-- bool
 |    +-- long
 |    +-- float
 |    +-- complex
 |
 +-- internal
      |
      +-- code
      +-- frame
      +-- traceback

...etc. Could this possibly be a good idea? Is it PEP-worthy?

yours,
Gerrit.

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