Underscores in Python numbers

[Roy Smith]

Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote:
> That's a tad unfair. Dealing with numeric literals with lots of digits is
> a real (if not earth-shattering) human interface problem: it is hard for
> people to parse long numeric strings. 

There are plenty of ways to make numeric literals easier to read without 
resorting to built-in language support.  One way is:

sixTrillion = 6 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000

Or, a more general solution might be to write a little factory function 
which took a string, stripped out the underscores (or spaces, or commas, or 
whatever bit of punctuation turned you on), and then converted the 
remaining digit string to an integer.  You could then write:

creditCardNumber = myInt ("1234 5678 9012 3456 789")

Perhaps not as convenient as having it built into the language, but 
workable in those cases which justify the effort.