Digit separators in number literals.

[lrhn]

This is currently under implementation: implementation issue, feature specification.

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Solution to #1.

To make long number literals more readable, allow authors to inject digit group separators inside numbers.
Examples with different possible separators:

100 000 000 000 000 000 000  // space 
100,000,000,000,000,000,000  // comma
100.000.000.000.000.000.000  // period
100'000'000'000'000'000'000  // apostrophe (C++)
100_000_000_000_000_000_000  // underscore (many programming languages).

The syntax must work even with just a single separator, so it can't be anything that can already validly seperate two expressions (excludes all infix operators and comma) and should already be part of a number literal (excludes decimal point).
So, the comma and decimal point are probably never going to work, even if they are already the standard "thousands separator" in text in different parts of the world.

Space separation is dangerous because it's hard to see whether it's just space, or it's an accidental tab character. If we allow spacing, should we allow arbitrary whitespace, including line terminators? If so, then this suddenly become quite dangerous. Forget a comma at the end of a line in a multiline list, and two adjacent integers are automatically combined (we already have that problem with strings). So, probably not a good choice, even if it is the preferred formatting for print text.

The apostrope is also the string single-quote character. We don't currently allow adjacent numbers and strings, but if we ever do, then this syntax becomes ambiguous. It's still possible (we disambiguate by assuming it's a digit separator). It is currently used by C++ 14 as a digit group separator, so it is definitely possible.

That leaves underscore, which could be the start of an identifier. Currently 100_000 would be tokenized as "integer literal 100" followed by "identifier _000". However, users would never write an identifier adjacent to another token that contains identifier-valid characters (unlike strings, which have clear delimiters that do not occur anywher else), so this is unlikely to happen in practice. Underscore is already used by a large number of programming languages including Java, Swift, and Python.

We also want to allow multiple separators for higher-level grouping, e.g.,:

100__000_000_000__000_000_000

For this purpose, the underscore extends gracefully. So does space, but has the disadvantage that it collapses when inserted into HTML, whereas '' looks odd.

For ease of reading and ease of parsing, we should only allow a digit separator that actually separates digits - it must occur between two digits of the number, not at the end or beginning, and if used in double literals, not adjacent to the . or e{+,-,} characters, or next to an x in a hexadecimal literal.

Examples

100__000_000__000_000__000_000  // one hundred million million millions!
0x4000_0000_0000_0000
0.000_000_000_01
0x00_14_22_01_23_45  // MAC address
555_123_4567  // US Phone number

Invalid literals:

100_
0x_00_14_22_01_23_45 
0._000_000_000_1
100_.1
1.2e_3

An identifier like _100 is a valid identifier, and _100._100 is a valid member access. If users learn the "separator only between digits" rule quickly, this will likely not be an issue.

Implementation issues

Should be trivial to implement at the parsing level. The only issue is that a parser might need to copy the digits (without the separators) before calling a parse function, where currently it might get away with pointing a native parse function directly at its input bytes.
This should have no effect after the parsing.

Style guides might introduce a preference for digit grouping (say, numbers with more than six digits should use separators) so a formatter or linter may want access to the actual source as well as the numerical value. The front end should make this available for source processing tools.

Library issues

Should int.parse/double.parse accept inputs with underscores. I think it's fine to not accept such input. It is not generated by int.toString(), and if a user has a string containing such an input, they can remove underscores manually before calling int.parse. That is not an option for source code literals.
I'd prefer to keep int.parse as efficient as possible, which means not adding a special case in the inner loop.
In JavaScript, parsing uses the built-in parseInt or Number functions, which do not accept underscores, so it would add (another) overhead for JavaScript compiled code.

Related work

Java digit separators.

[eernstg]

+1!

[tejainece]

_ seems to be least confusing and non-intrusive syntax.

[munificent]

My feeling has always been that if you need separators in your number literal, you have likely already done something wrong. Instead of separators, create a const expression that shows where that large number is coming from.

Instead of:

const largeThing = 100000000000000000000;
const bigHex = 0x4000000000000000;

Consider, say:

const msPerSecond = 1000;
const nsPerMs = 1000000;
const largeThing = 100000000 * nsPerMs * msPerSecond;

const bigHex = 1 << 62;

This has the advantage of being easier to read and showing why these constants have these values. You do sometimes run into big arbitrary literals coming from empirical measurements or other things, but those tend to be fairly rare.

Given that number separators add confusion around how things like int.parse() behave, and there are "workarounds" that actually lead to clearer code, I've never felt they carried their weight.

[tejainece]

@munificent How many digits are there in 100000000000000000000 and 0x4000000000000000? You gotta get a cursor and count. Instead if you put an _ before every 4 digits, you any say x parts * 4 (for hex. 3 for currency, etc).

It is not always possible to decompose a number into its composite parts.

[pschiffmann]

FWIW, I'd like to suggest using quotes, like we already have for string literals: 100__000_000__000_000__000_000 might instead be expresssed as `100 000,000 000,000 000,000`. If you'd rather reserve the ` character for some future use, one could consider n'100 000,000 000,000 000,000', modeled after raw strings. Either way, there are more choices for the separator characters inside quotes.

If this repo is not the right place for unsolicited opinions from non-Dart team members, sorry to bother you.

[munificent]

It is not always possible to decompose a number into its composite parts.

I think one of these is usually true:

1. The number can be decomposed into smaller meaningful parts.
2. The number is some arbitrary empirical constant in which case a human will rarely need to scrutinize the individual digits.

So, in either case, I don't think it's a high priority to be able to easily read very large number literals.

[kasperpeulen]

I agree with munificent. But I think Dart needs the exponentiation operator ** for some cases:

const largeThing = 10**14;

Dart should then allow exponentiation of constant numbers to be a constant value with is not possible with pow(10,14) at the moment.

[lrhn]

While an exponentation operator can solve some issues, it won't make me get 0x7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF right. That is a valid 64-bit integer literal (at least if I counted the F's correctly).

(There is also the option of exponential notation for integers: 1p22 or 0x1p62 as short for 1 * 10**22 and 0x1 * 16 ** 62, like we have for doubles using e).

[AdamskiMarcin]

Maybe it's not high priority, but would definitely be a useful thing. See an example:

log.d("Built in ${stopwatch.elapsedMicroseconds / 1000000} s");

and compare with the snippet below:

log.d("Built in ${stopwatch.elapsedMicroseconds / 1_000_000} s");

Just a simple and readable one-liner. No need for adding multiplication or extra variables for readibility, like:

log.d("Built in ${stopwatch.elapsedMicroseconds / (1000 * 1000)} s");

var multiplier = 1000 * 1000; log.d("Built in ${stopwatch.elapsedMicroseconds / multiplier} s");

[Levi-Lesches]

Any updates on this?

[mpfaff]

I'd love to see this. Particularly with colours in Flutter, where I usually have something like const Color(0xff3F4E90). I would much prefer const Color(0xff_3F4E90), because the 0xff makes it more difficult to read the actual color at a glance.

[munificent]

No updates, sorry. We are hard at work on null safety, which I hope everyone agrees is higher impact than digit separators. :)

[MarkOSullivan94]

No updates, sorry. We are hard at work on null safety, which I hope everyone agrees is higher impact that digit separators. :)

Now that null safety has been released, I'm wondering what's the priority of digit separators?

[lrhn]

Honestly: Priority is low.

It's not blocking anything. The "small" features which will be part of Dart 2.13 are things you simply couldn't do before, so adding them now enables code that simply couldn't be written before. The sooner the better.

The lack of digit separators is not blocking any code from being written, you can write functional code that does exactly the same thing (it's just harder to read). So, features which remove actual blocks will likely have a higher priority when competing for the finite developer resource.

Personally, I want it yesterday. Yesteryear. Yesterdecade!

[Levi-Lesches]

I completely agree with you, but I always found it funny that "making numbers easier" is literally issues #1, #2, #3, and #4 of this repo 😂

[pstricks-fans]

Improving int.parse to allow parsing the following might be a good idea.

var reference = int.parse("1111_0000_0001_1110_1111_0000_0001_1110", radix: 2);

[srawlins]

Is this something worth pursuing, this spec as it is, and this CL as it is heading? Should I mail it for review?

[lrhn]

I'd love this, and the spec (one or more _s allowed between any two digits) is what I think we'd want, but I don't get to decide unanimously. Sadly.

The parser people need to approve of the approach, and the full language team needs to approve that we're really (and finally) doing this.
@jensjoha @johnniwinther @dart-lang/language-team

[natebosch]

Do we expect folks to ask us for a lint ensuring that separators always surround exactly 3 (or some other number) digits?

It looks weird to allow 0_x, but I could be convinced that the simpler spec which ignores every _ in a number literal is easier for users to reason about.

[srawlins]

Do we expect folks to ask us for a lint ensuring that separators always surround exactly 3 (or some other number) digits?

Absolutely they will. As for whether we would write it, I don't think it would be high priority. @lrhn gives the example of a US phone number, 555_123_4567.

IIUC, this spec does not allow 0_x, as in 0_x123, because 0x is not part of the "digits" of a number.

[lrhn]

Yes, 0_x1 is not allowed, separators are only allowed between digits, and x is not a digit. (But the hex digits after the x are.)

I'm not sure whether the leading 0 should count as a digit or not. (Probably not.) Luckily it doesn't matter.

[natebosch]

IIUC, this spec does not allow 0_x, as in 0_x123, because 0x is not part of the "digits" of a number.

Ah cool - I misread one of the tests in the linked CL.

LGTM

[lrhn]

@srawlins The language team is OK with implementing the currently proposed specification:
Allow one or more _s between any two otherwise adjacent digits of a NUMBER or HEX_NUMBER token. The following are not digits: The leading 0x or 0X in HEX_NUMBER, and any ., e, E, + or - in NUMBER.

That means only allowing _s between two 0-9 digits in NUMBER and between two 0-9,a-f,A-F digits in HEX_NUMBER.

The grammar would be (changing <DIGIT>+ to <DIGITS> which is then <DIGIT>s with optional _s between, and same for hex digits:

<NUMBER> ::= <DIGITS> (`.' <DIGITS>)? <EXPONENT>?
  \alt `.' <DIGITS> <EXPONENT>?

<EXPONENT> ::= (`e' | `E') (`+' | `-')? <DIGITS>

<DIGITS> ::= <DIGIT> (`_'* <DIGIT>)*

<HEX\_NUMBER> ::= `0x' <HEX\_DIGITS>
  \alt `0X' <HEX\_DIGITS>

<HEX\_DIGIT> ::= `a' .. `f'
  \alt `A' .. `F'
  \alt <DIGIT>

<HEX\_DIGITS> ::= <HEX\_DIGIT> (`_'* <HEX\_DIGIT>)*

(Handing this over to implementation. It's the parser people you have to make happy now 😁).

[srawlins]

Thanks much @lrhn and team!

[lrhn]

May want to give it an experiment flag (I suggest digit_separators) so the feature will be language versioned.
(Even if it's non-breaking to allow it for all language versions, it may lead someone use it in code which only require, fx, Dart 2.12, and which will then fail if actually run on an older SDK.)

[srawlins]

Yep, every language feature we've had since nnbd (except inference-updates) has been non-breaking, except in the case you indicate. Many files included in the CR are just there for the new experiment flag.

[gmpassos]

Is this affecting int.parse() or double.parse()?

Until Dart 3.5, an int or double declared in the code could be parsed using int.parse and double.parse.

[srawlins]

It is not affecting int.parse or double.parse; you are correct that ints and doubles can no longer necessarily be parsed with int.parse and double.parse without some pre-processing to remove separators.

[lrhn]

Agree. Not affecting int.parse, double.parse or num.parse, and also not affecting int.toString or double.toString, which the parse functions are intended to parse the output of.

The contents of runtime strings are the same as Dart source number literals. There are many ways to format numbers for readability, and the parse functions do not support any of them. They do support parsing the result of toString, which is the most important part.

[gmpassos]

I don't know if it needs to be documented that *.parser won't be affected or changed. However, it should at least be considered due to the broad use of the language. Additionally, highlight that the use of _ can be incompatible with *.parse/tryParse.

[srawlins]

Yeah I'm happy to put that into the changelog or feature spec; I encountered a few tools that assume number literals can be passed to int.parse etc.

[mit-mit]

This is currently under implementation, please see dart-lang/sdk#56188

[srawlins]

Done. Will be available in Dart SDK 3.6.0 with a minimum Dart language version of 3.6.

[sanba-anass]

dang it i did run into this issue now i tought it was an already existing feature lol