On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > On Sat, 25 Aug 2012 09:55:27 +0100, Mark Lawrence > <breamore...@yahoo.co.uk> declaimed the following in > gmane.comp.python.general: > >> >> I'm just wondering out aloud if the number of times this type of thread >> has been debated here will fit into a Python long or float? > > Well, since I don't think one can have a fractional debate (maybe if > someone starts a thread and NOBODY ever follows up on it), then float's > don't gain us anything there. > > Presuming a double-precision float, we would have 14-15 significant > digits for the mantissa -- so anything greater than > (9)99,999,999,999,999 will have lost accuracy. In contrast Python longs > have effectively unlimited significant digits.
I wonder if some people are applying an alternative form of duck typing - if it quacks like a "should Python have variables" debate, it gets silenced with that universal grey tape... ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
