Decimals and other numbers

Ben Finney ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Thu Jan 8 21:43:04 EST 2015


Devin Jeanpierre <jeanpierreda at gmail.com> writes:

> decimal.InvalidOperation: 0 ** 0
>
> I'd file a bug report but I'm anticipating some rational (heh)
> explanation. Any ideas?

First note that it's explicitly documented as an invalid operation
<URL:file:///usr/share/doc/python3-doc/html/library/decimal.html#decimal.InvalidOperation>.
So someone has at least thought about it and deliberately decided it
should be so.

Why that should be, I don't know; I think the correct behaviour is for
‘0 ** 0 == 1’. But perhaps someone else has a better explanation for why
Decimal should behave differently from ‘int’ and ‘float’ here.

-- 
 \      “I bought a self learning record to learn Spanish. I turned it |
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Ben Finney




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