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[Python-Dev] Backport new float repr to Python 2.7?

Eric Smith eric at trueblade.com
Mon Oct 12 21:42:52 CEST 2009 
[Tim:]
> If you don't consider Windows to be a major platform ;-)  Besides that
> there's just no guessing what the Microsoft double->string routines
> will produce for the 17th digit, the MS routines always produce 3
> digits for the exponent in scientific notation, while AFAIK all other
> platforms produce 2 digits when 3 aren't necessary.  For example, on
> Windows under Python 2.x:
>
>>>> repr(1e47)
> '1e+047'
>>>> repr(1e-47)
> '9.9999999999999997e-048'
>
> and "everywhere else":
>
>>>> repr(1e47)
> '1e+47'
>>>> repr(1e-47)
> '9.9999999999999997e-48'

Not that it's germane to the discussion, but this 3 digit exponent on
Windows was fixed in 2.6.

> The leading 0 in the Window's exponents is enough to break a naive
> doctest too -- and repr(x) does produce scientific notation for
> "almost all" finite doubles.  Why people are obsessed with the
> relative handful of doubles between 1 and 1000 is beyond me ;-)
>
> As doctest's original author, I have no sympathy for users who burn
> themselves with float output.  Of course it's open to question whether
> I have sympathy for anyone, ever, but that's not the issue here ;-)

I agree, we shouldn't base the decision to change this based on doctests.
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