Raymond Hettinger added the comment: Not sure I'm the grinch on this one. I thought PEPs on this were rejected long ago and no one complained afterwards. After years of watching newsgroup discussions and feature requests, I do not recall a single request or seeing a single problem that was better solved with a rational package. On python-help and the tutorial newsgroup, I've never seen a question about the existing module in the Tools directory or even a question on the topic.
I think rational modules are ubiquitous for the same reason as Sudoku solvers -- they are cute, an easy exercise, and fun to write. There is some variation in how each chooses to make compromises so the denominators do not get unusably large. Also, there is some variation in sophistication of the GCD/LCD algorithm. I had thought the standards for inclusion in the standard library had risen quite a bit (best-in-class category killers and whatnot). ISTM, this is aspiring cruft -- I cannot remember encountering a real business or engineering problem that needed rational arithmetic (the decimal module seems to meet the rare need for high precision arithmetic). All that being said, maybe the module with serve some sort of educational purpose or will serve to show-off the numeric tower abstract base classes. __________________________________ Tracker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://bugs.python.org/issue1682> __________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
