On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > This is much like my experience with Apple's Hypertalk, where the only > data structure is a string. I'm very fond of Hypertalk, but it is hardly > designed with machine efficiency in mind. If you think Python is slow > now, imagine how slow it would be if every expression had to be converted > from a number back into a string, and vice versa, after every operation: > > x = str(int("1") + int("2")) > y = str(int("9")/int("3")) > z = str(int(x) - int(y)) > flag = str(int(z) == int("0")) > > only implicitly, by the interpreter.
Except that it wouldn't bother with a native integer implementation, would it? With a string-is-bignum system, it could simply do the arithmetic on the string itself, with no conversions at all. Re harrismh's code: For that sort of work, I used and still use the REXXTry program that comes with OS/2 (written, I believe, by Mike Cowlishaw), with a modified input routine that gives readline-style capabilities. Dragging this vaguely back on topic, the end result is rather similar in feel to IDLE or Hilfe (Pike's interactive interpreter). Chris Angelico -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list