Michael> If you're going to change CPython to do this, I think adopting Michael> PEP 754, and using the fpconst module would be better than Michael> changing how float() works when called on string literals.
But PEP 754 will only work for architectures supporting IEEE 754. I realize that's the vast majority of systems, but aren't there still a few Crays and VMS machines out there? (Do those architectures support NaN and Inf?) Skip -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list