On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 5:37 AM, Mikhail V <mikhail...@gmail.com> wrote: >> You have to show >> that decimal isn't just marginally better than hex; you have to show >> that there are situations where the value of decimal character >> literals is so great that it's worth forcing everyone to learn two >> systems. And I'm not convinced you've even hit the first point. > > Frankly I don't fully understand your point here.
Let me clarify. When you construct a string, you can already use escapes to represent characters: "n\u0303" --> n followed by combining tilde In order to be consistent with other languages, Python *has* to support hexadecimal. Plus, Python has _already_ supported hex for some time. To establish decimal as an alternative, you have to demonstrate that it is worth having ANOTHER way to do this. With completely green-field topics, you can debate the merits of one notation against another, and the overall best one will win. But when there's a well-established existing notation, you have to justify the proliferation of notations. You have to show that your new format is *so much* better than the existing one that it's worth adding it in parallel. That's quite a high bar - not impossible, obviously, but you need some very strong justification. At the moment, you're showing minor advantages to decimal, and other people are showing minor advantages to hex; but IMO nothing yet has been strong enough to justify the implementation of a completely new way to do things - remember, people have to understand *both* in order to read code. ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
