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Wed Mar 16 22:54:13 CET 2011 · https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2011-March/109401.html

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 3:00 PM, Raymond Hettinger
<raymond.hettinger at gmail.com> wrote:
..
> The version number in the decimal module refers to the version of the
> spec that is being complied with.  I would like that version number
> to remain in the module.

I mentioned this in my first post.   If the version number of the spec
is important, shouldn't it be called something else?  Note that
__version__ value appears in pydoc as the version the module, and it
is confusing to have it refer to something else.  This fact is only
mentioned in a comment inside the module and cannot be found either in
module docstrings or reST documentation.

Note that in a similar situation, another module, unicodedata defines
unidata_version variable which is properly documented:

http://docs.python.org/library/unicodedata.html?highlight=unicodedata#unicodedata.unidata_version

I think this is a better approach.  (It would be even better if it was
called "ucd_version" or "unicode_version", but  "unidata_version" is
good enough.)

I also question the utility of maintaining IBM draft version in the
decimal module.  Note that the current version 1.70 is described as
follows:

Changes in Version 1.70 (25 Mar 2009)

The document is now formatted using OpenOffice (generated from GML),
for improved PDF files with bookmarks, hot links, etc. There are no
technical changes.  See http://speleotrove.com/decimal/dachange.html

On the other hand, spot checking the changes from other versions I
immediately found that at least one change introduced in the previous
version, 1.68, was not implemented:

"The normalize operation has been renamed reduce to avoid confusion
with normal numbers."

It may actually be more useful to refer to the appropriate version of
IEEE 754 standard.  Or if no strict compliance with any particular
standard or version of specification is promised, not record spec
version in the module at all.

Given that decimal.__version__ has not changed since it was
introduced, I doubt there is a lot of code out there that relies on
it.

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[Python-Dev] Module version variable