On Apr 8, 6:01 pm, Jonathan Gardner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Apr 8, 2:25 pm, Grzegorz S³odkowicz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > Isn't Decimal a BCD implementation? > > Yep, you are right and I am > wrong.http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0327/#why-not-rational
Strictly speaking, BCD doesn't come into it: the coefficient of a Decimal instance is stored simply as a string of digits. This is pretty wasteful in terms of space: 1 byte per decimal digit instead of the 4 bits per digit that BCD gives, but it's convenient and fairly efficient. An alternative representation that's gained popularity recently is DPD (densely packed decimal), which packs 3 decimal digits into 10 bits in a clever way that allows reasonably efficient extraction of any one of the 3 digits. Decimal doesn't use this either. :) Mark -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
