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Fri Apr 16 04:01:22 EDT 2004 · https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-April/044321.html

Edward Loper wrote:

> As long as the limits are soft (and can be changed), I won't object
> too
> strenuously, because someone who wanted extremely large/small numbers
> could use them.  But...
>
>    - I do believe that there will be use cases for exponents outside
>      this range.  Just because there's no physical quantities that are
>      reasonably measured with these numbers, doesn't mean that there
>      won't be abstract quantities that are reasonably measured with
>      huge numbers.

There's no reason that if these use cases become common enough to care
about, that a future version of Python couldn't increase or eliminate the
limits. It's a lot easier to remove limits (e.g. the int/long unification)
than to add them.

I'm +0 on having the limits there initially, even if they complicate the
implementation somewhat. I'm highly unlikely to ever encounter them, just as
I've never produced a long large enough to cause problems.

Tim Delaney

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[Python-Dev] Decimal data type issues