mark dickinson vqpxmqtcgmailcom wed mar 26 2008 257 nick coghlan wrote greg ewing wrote thought decimal going replaced c implementation soon anyway worth going much trouble believe found trouble worth optimisations focused various ways making python implementation efficient think still worth considering hybrid implementation decimal c code basic integer arithmetic supply long int replacement whose underlying implementation works base power 10 python complicated logic dealing flags special values etc speed things usual cases also give everything right asymptotics people using decimal really high precision arithmetic right addition two decimals takes quadratic time decimal long integer implementation already sandbox probably isnt much work sounds wont time may though mark wed 06 aug 2008 202252 0400 pythondev decimalunicode