[Python-Dev] Re: PEP239 (Rational Numbers) Reference Implementation and new issues

Sat, 5 Oct 2002 20:01:12 -0500

 >> If Guido was adding complex numbers today instead of long ago, I
 >> wonder if he would allow a special notation for them, or just suggest
 >> a constructor.
 Guido> At the time I believe there was heavy pressure from the Numeric
 Guido> crowd to allow a special notation. I'm not so sure if I should
 Guido> have given in though.
However, 1+4j can be peephole optimized into a compile-time constant whereas
complex(1,4) can't. This is generally not a big deal, but to people who
deal with complex numbers a lot (and tend to be more sensitive to
optimization issues) it can be. I believe when I tested my peephole
optimizer using pybench several years ago, the complex number tests showed
the most improvement because I could collapse constant expressions.
Of course, people using lots of complex numbers probably initialize their
complex constants outside of loops. ;-)
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