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[Python-Dev] Numeric alignment issue with PEP 3101

Eric Smith eric at trueblade.com
Tue Sep 8 13:56:53 CEST 2009 
Mark Dickinson wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 11:10 PM, Eric Smith<eric at trueblade.com> wrote:
>> Hmm, I never noticed that. At this point, I think changing the formatting
>> for any types would break code, so we should just change the documentation
>> to reflect how currently works.
> 
> I think the alignment for Decimal *does* need to be changed, though.  It
> currently left-aligns by default (my fault:  I just blindly followed PEP 3101
> without thinking too hard about it).  I'd like to fix this for 3.2 and 2.7; I'm
> not sure whether it's too disruptive to fix it in 3.1 and 2.6.

Right, not changing "any types" was too strong. I think that the numeric 
types should all default to right alignment. That means Decimal should 
change. I agree this should only be in 3.2 and 2.7. In addition, PEP 
3101 and the documentation should be change to reflect the default right 
alignment for numeric types.

Shame on you, Mark, for actually reading and implementing the specs! ;) 
You see that I didn't bother with that. At the time, I think I was 
trying to get str.format() to exactly agree with %-formatting.
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