Steve Holden wrote: > David M. Cooke wrote: >> One example I can think of is a large number of float constants used >> for some math routine. In that case they usually be a full 16 or 17 >> digits. It'd be handy in that case to split into smaller groups to >> make it easier to match with tables where these constants may come >> from. Ex: >> >> def sinxx(x): >> "computes sin x/x for 0 <= x <= pi/2 to 2e-9" >> a2 = -0.16666 66664 >> a4 = 0.00833 33315 >> a6 = -0.00019 84090 >> a8 = 0.00000 27526 >> a10= -0.00000 00239 >> x2 = x**2 >> return 1. + x2*(a2 + x2*(a4 + x2*(a6 + x2*(a8 + x2*a10)))) >> >> (or least that's what I like to write). Now, if I were going to higher >> precision, I'd have more digits of course. >> > Right, this is clearly such a frequent use case it's worth changing the > compiler for.
Yes it is. In that one example he used digit grouping 5 more times than I've used lambda in my life. Remember people use python as a data format as well (see for example JSON). It's a simple harmless change to the parser: ignore underscores or spaces in numeric literals. As others have mentioned, Ruby supports this already, as do Ada, Perl, ML variants, VHDL, boo, nemerle, and others. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
