On Oct 26, 7:17 pm, "J. Cliff Dyer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Matimus wrote: > >> - Traling characters at the end of a literal are already used (the L > >> for long). > > > The trailing L is going away in Python 3.0. For your consideration may > > I suggest a '$' prefix. Though, I'm not sure I even support the idea > > of a decimal literal, and I'm not even sure if I support the idea of > > using a prefix '$' to identify that literal, it seems somewhat > > fitting. > > > So... > > Decimal("12.34") -> $12.34 > > > Pros: > > - Easier to see than appended character (I think) > > - Notation is fitting when dealing with monetary values > > - Easy to remember > > Cons: > > - Maybe too clever for its own good. Some people may be confused to > > find out that it isn't actually a monetary type. > > I'm sure there are more... > > - Too U.S. centric. Euro would be a slight improvement, as it doesn't > privilege one country, but still too region-centric. Generic currency > marker from ISO 8859-1 would be even less unnecessarily specific, but > also too obscure.
FYI: The $ sign is used to denote currency in many countries; as a rule of thumb countties that call their currency "dollars" or "pesos" use the $. So Mexico, Canada, Australia, much of Latin America, much of the Pacific, not to mention countries in Africa (Zimbabwe) and Asia (Singapore). It's certainly less region-specific than the Euro is. Carl Banks -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list