[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: Mac Python Bug? Decimal representaion in lists

[Jack Jansen]

On zaterdag, jun 21, 2003, at 23:02 Europe/Amsterdam, Martin McGowan 
wrote:

> Jack,
> 	I'm an absolute newbie to Python, and on my OS X
> for 4 months.   I am an accomplished programmer, however
> with roots in AT&T Sys V, Posix Standards.
>
> 	I've attached a brief cut-out from following steps
> on the python.org tutorial  (python.org/doc/tut).  I believe
> we have a bug here:

Martin,
these numbers are not decimals (if you mean that in what I'll
call the "cobol sense") but floating point numbers. Moreover,
they're pretty much transparently implemented with the underlying
platform floating point numbers (IEEE in case of MacOS on a
PowerPC, and 99% of all other machines nowadays).

There's been some work on decimal numbers (also referred to as
fixed point), but I'm not familiar with it. So you'll have to
use Google or PyPI (see www.python.org for the latter) to
find a module that could help you here.

>   I've searched comp.lang.python, and the macpython-sig
>  archives, for "bug, list bug, and buglist", but didn't
>  find this mentioned.

It is mentioned somewhere, but unfortunately I can't remember where:-(
Ah, found it! The tutorial has a section on it, Appendix B.

And if you think you find a genuine bug: www.python.org has a link
to the bug database, where you can submit it.
--
- Jack Jansen        <Jack.Jansen at oratrix.com>        
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack -
- If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma 
Goldman -