“In this article on migrating from Perl to Python we’re going to
look at the basic numeric object type.”
“It’ll be no surprise to you that Python uses an oject to hold a
number. There are no restrictions on what type of number can be
stored within a Number object, which basically follows the same
premise as the Perl scalar and it’s built in IV (Integer Value) and
DV (Double Value) types. However, unlink Perl, Python also supports
complex numbers and arbitrarily large integers.”
“As we already know, Python creates an object using the type as
determined from information that is assigned to the object when it
is created. With number objects it is the format of the number that
determines the method in which the information is stored. We
therefore need to know how to introduce numerical constants into
our Python programs. Details on the different types of constants,
and how Python stores them internally are outlined below.”