Underscores in numbers for legibility Lassi Kortela 12 Apr 2019 18:54 UTC
Has there been any discussion of standardizing the use of underscores in the read/write syntax of numbers? Gauche lets me write this: gosh> #d123_456 123456 gosh> (format "~x" #x123_4_56) "123456" However, without a base prefix (i.e. #b #o #d #x) a number is interpreted as a symbol: 123_456 The Ruby language also allows underscores in numbers. Common Lisp leaves a provision for it in the standard but I don't know of any implementations that use the opportunity. I find that it makes it a lot easier to read long strings of digits if you can separate them into groups like that. YMMV.