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Toppling the numeric tower

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Thu Jul 26 17:21:55 EDT 2001 
"Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> writes:

> For discussion purposes, I'm going to assume that some forms of PEP 237, 238
> and 239 are eventually adopted. In that case, integers and longs will be
> unified. The integers can then be completely emebedded into rationals. This
> leaves us with just one level of precision/range for exact numbers (infinite
> more or less) and one level of precision/range for inexact numbers (C
> double). This allows the numeric tower to be knocked down and stirred around
> to form a box:
> 
>    Real      Complex
>       |               |
> rRational cRational -- Rational (Exact)
> rFloat          cFloat -- Float      (Inexact)

I just don't see much use for complex rational...  So then we're back
to my original tower (with rational).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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