On Sep 23, 7:31 pm, Terry Reedy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Decimal is something of an anomaly in Python because it was written to > exactly follow an external standard, with no concessions to what would > be sensible for Python. It is possible that that standard mandates that > Decimals not compare to floats.
I don't think the standard says anything about interactions between Decimals and floats. But there's certainly been a feeling amongst at least some of the developers that the job of Python's decimal module is to implement the standard and no more, and that extensions to its functionality belong elsewhere. Regarding equality, there's at least one technical issue: the requirement that objects that compare equal hash equal. How do you come up with efficient hash operations for integers, floats, Decimals and Fractions that satisfy this requirement? For other arithmetic operations: should the sum of a float and a Decimal produce a Decimal or a float? Why? It's not at all clear to me that either of these types is 'higher up' the numerical tower than the other. Mark -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
