On 3/18/07, Thomas Wouters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On 3/18/07, Patrick Maupin <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: > > the treatment of string literal representations of integers > > I don't think this is the right term. It's certainly confusing, considering > "string literals" are the stuff in quotes. A less confusing name is just > 'integer literals'.
Right. This is how the Python reference manual uses the term. "Literals" are all notations for values; e.g. string literals, numeric literals. (We don't talk of list or dict literals since they can contain arbitrary expressions.) > > - There is a strong desire for binary support in the language. > > I have yet to see this 'strong desire'. I've seen people remark that they > think it'd be nicely symmetric, but requests for actual usecases have always > gotten low responses, as far as I remember. I've done quite a bit of > bitfiddling with Python, with the struct module or with hexadecimals and > bitwise operations, and in none of those cases would a binary literal have > been helpful; they're way too verbose and impossible to get right/debug. Well, *I* have seen the strong desire -- not in myself, but I have seen it. It's a done deal. 0b for binary is in. > > But the Python community has its share of minimalists (each with > > his own idea of the proper subset), so, for example, Mattias > > Engdegård wrote: "only decimal, hex and binary constants are > > of general use at all" while Thomas Wouters opined that octal > > and hexadecimal should remain but binary was only for misguided > > students doing their homework. > > This strikes me as a rather snide and childish paragraph [...] Patrick, please remove specific names from the PEP. > > So, in general, humans communicate "normal" (non-computer) > > numerical information either via names (AM, PM, January, ...) > > or via use of decimal notation. Obviously, names are > > seldom used for large sets of items, so decimal is used for > > everything else. There are studies which attempt to explain > > why this is so, typically reaching the expected conclusion > > that the Arabic numeral system is well-suited to human > > cognition. [3]_ > > I'm not sure why all this matters to the PEP, really. Do we really have to > justify having decimal, hexadecimal and octal literals? It's _way_ oversized > if you ask me :) Octal does need to be justified, since some people argued to remove it. I guess binary needs to be justified because Thomas doesn't see the need. :-) > -- > Thomas Wouters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
