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[Python-Dev] Unifying Long Integers and Integers: baseint

Brett C. bac at OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Thu Aug 19 23:42:00 CEST 2004 
Michael Chermside wrote:

>>>>>if the only reason for it is to use isinstance?
>>>>
>>>>So that an extension author *could* write an int-like type deriving
>>>>from it?
>>>
>>>But didn't you just say that people shouldn't be
>>>deriving their own int-like types from baseinteger?
>>
>>Indeed, in general they shouldn't.  But for specialized purposes it
>>might be needed (that's why I emphasized *could*).
> 
> 
> I call YAGNI. We're talking about creating the class baseinteger
> which might be useful ONLY for people creating new kinds of integers
> in Python which will NOT extend int or long but WILL need to be
> treated just like integers. Who is really likely to do that? And if
> in the process we introduce a new class which won't be needed in
> the long run (ie Python 3000 has just one type, called "int" and has
> no need for baseinteger). So I maintain that it's not needed (and
> is, in fact, confusing to users) unless someone has a real use case.
> 

I'm with Michael on this.  We have gone this long without having a need 
for a baseinteger type (when was long introduced?) so I don't see a need 
to add it now.  Let's just live with the dichotomy until Python 3000 
(moving over to 3000 as Guido suggested in the "PEP 3000" thread) comes out.

-Brett
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