Skip to main content
Pre-release

This release is a pre-release and may not be stable for production use.

decimo

A drop-in replacement for Python's decimal, written in Mojo.

PyPI License

⚠️ Development release. The API is settled enough to use, but the versions carry a timestamp: 0.14.0.devYYYYMMDDHHMMSS, where 0.14.0 is the version of the Mojo library the wheel packages. Wheels: macOS arm64 (11 and later) and Linux x86_64 and arm64 (glibc 2.35 and later), CPython 3.13 and 3.14. Everywhere else, build from source.

Change one import and your program keeps working:

# from decimal import Decimal, getcontext
from decimo import Decimal, getcontext

getcontext().prec = 50
print(Decimal(1) / Decimal(7))
# 0.14285714285714285714285714285714285714285714285714

The two libraries agree digit for digit. The test suite checks every operation against the standard library rather than against a table of expected strings, so "agrees with decimal" is a property that is measured, not a claim.

How fast is it?

The same benchmark file run against both libraries -- python/benchmarks/compare.py in the repository, which imports one or the other and runs identical code. Best of five, on an Apple M-series laptop:

Program decimo decimal
add/sub/mul/div, 28 digits 90.6 ns 73.0 ns 1.24× slower
add/sub/mul/div, 200 digits 331.8 ns 409.0 ns 1.23× faster
add/sub/mul/div, 1000 digits 2.02 µs 5.89 µs 2.91× faster
compound interest, 150 years 12.71 µs 13.08 µs about the same
e from its series, 500 digits 197.92 µs 162.75 µs 1.22× slower
sqrt by Newton, 1000 digits 143.29 µs 232.29 µs 1.62× faster
pi by Machin, 500 digits 620.12 µs 520.17 µs 1.19× slower
parse and print, 1000 digits 3.28 µs 2.60 µs 1.26× slower

decimo is faster once the numbers are large, and 20-25% behind on small ones. The small-number gap is not the arithmetic: measured against libmpdec directly, without an interpreter in the way, decimo is 2-4× faster at 9 digits and faster at every operation at 1000 digits. What is left is the cost of the Python call itself -- building the result object and converting the operands -- which CPython's decimal has had thirty years to shave. See the benchmarks.

What works

Everything a decimal program normally touches:

  • all the operators, including //, %, divmod() and **
  • getcontext().prec and getcontext().rounding, setcontext(), localcontext() (with keyword overrides), Context objects
  • all the rounding modes: ROUND_HALF_EVEN, ROUND_HALF_UP, ROUND_HALF_DOWN, ROUND_DOWN, ROUND_UP, ROUND_CEILING, ROUND_FLOOR, exact for arithmetic, quantize, round() and to_integral_value()
  • int(), float(), round(), math.floor/ceil/trunc, hash(), format()
  • Context you can compute with: ctx.divide(x, y), ctx.sqrt(x), ctx.quantize(x, y) and the rest, none of them touching the current context
  • keyword arguments where decimal takes them: quantize(exp, rounding=ROUND_HALF_UP), to_integral_value(rounding=...), sqrt(context=...)
  • Decimal((sign, digits, exponent)), so as_tuple() round-trips
  • pow(x, y, modulus), by modular exponentiation
  • quantize, normalize, as_tuple, as_integer_ratio, compare, fma, sqrt, exp, ln, log10, scaleb, adjusted, copy_abs, copy_negate, copy_sign, same_quantum, to_eng_string, max, min
  • the rest of the specification's surface: remainder_near, next_plus, next_minus, next_toward, shift, rotate, logical_and, logical_or, logical_xor, logical_invert, logb, compare_total, compare_total_mag, compare_signal, max_mag, min_mag, number_class, to_integral_exact, is_normal, is_subnormal, from_number
  • the same coercion rules: int converts in arithmetic, float does not, and both convert in a comparison
  • copy, deepcopy and pickle
  • ZeroDivisionError where you expect it, and hashes that agree with int, float and decimal.Decimal

Three things decimal does not have

decimo.pi(1000)   # 1000 digits of pi, by Chudnovsky with binary splitting
decimo.e(50)      # 50 digits of e
Decimal(2).sqrt(rounding=ROUND_FLOOR)   # and exp, ln, log10 too

pi() and e() use the context precision when given no argument; decimal has neither, and its documentation gives a recipe to write your own.

rounding= on sqrt, exp, ln and log10 is decimo's own: decimal ignores the context mode for these and always rounds half to even. And the answer under any mode is decided rather than approximated. The library computes wider than you asked, takes the interval its own error bound allows, and checks that the whole of it rounds to one answer; if a boundary falls inside, it widens and looks again. The same check now guards the default half to even, where before the last digit was assumed rather than known -- so ROUND_FLOOR really does stay under the true value, and a tie really is a tie.

A second type for money

Decimal is arbitrary precision and is what a program reaching for decimal.Decimal wants. Decimal128 is the other one: 96 bits of coefficient and a scale from 0 to 28, in sixteen bytes that own nothing -- the layout .NET's System.Decimal and Rust's rust_decimal use.

from decimo import Decimal128        # Dec128 is the same type

price = Decimal128("19.99")
line = (price * 3).quantize(Decimal128("0.01"))     # 59.97
Decimal128(2).sqrt()                                # and exp, ln, log10, sin, cos, tan
Decimal128("1").to_ieee754()                        # the IEEE 754 interchange bytes

It arithmetics, compares, hashes and rounds like Decimal, mixes with int, float and str on either side of an operator, and converts both ways (Decimal128(x).to_decimal(), Decimal(x)). Its results never allocate, so it is quicker where the values are money and the shape of them is known:

Decimal128 Decimal decimal
a + b 46 ns 67 73
a * b 57 ns 92 85
a / b 114 ns 225 133
from text 116 ns 160 136
str(x) 118 ns 437 67
an invoice 633 ns 713 705

str is the one that is slower.

A mixed expression settles in the wider type: Decimal128(x) + Decimal(y) is a Decimal, either way round, because widening loses nothing.

What it does not do: it stops at 7.9E+28 and 28 decimal places and raises rather than rounding into a context, it has no Context of its own beyond the rounding mode, and its scale is never negative -- Decimal128("1.23E+5") is 123000, where decimal keeps a coefficient of 123 with an exponent of 3 and can print it as 123E+3. Decimal128(0.1) is 0.1 rather than the whole binary expansion, since 55 digits do not fit 28; what is promised is that float(Decimal128(x)) == x.

What does not

decimo refuses these rather than answering differently:

  • NaN and infinity. decimo has no non-finite values. is_nan() and is_infinite() are always False.
  • ROUND_05UP. Nothing implements it; setting it raises NotImplementedError.
  • sqrt, exp, ln and log10 ignore the context rounding, as they do in decimal, and round half to even unless you pass rounding=. ** follows the context, also as in decimal. All of them are correctly rounded whichever mode applies, as are arithmetic, quantize and round().
  • //, %, divmod() and remainder_near with a long quotient. decimal raises InvalidOperation when the integer quotient has more digits than the precision; decimo answers. The remainder is rounded to the context, as in decimal.
  • Emin only reaches four methods. Exponents are unbounded, so Emin changes nothing except what next_plus(0), next_minus(0), is_subnormal() and number_class() say, where decimal's answers need a smallest exponent.
  • Signals and traps. Context.flags and Context.traps exist and stay empty. Inexact, Rounded and the rest are importable but never raised.
  • Emin / Emax. Exponents are unbounded, so nothing ever underflows to zero or overflows to infinity. A loop that waits for a term to become exactly zero will not stop; wait for the sum to stop changing instead.
  • One context per process, not per thread.

DivisionByZero and InvalidOperation are aliases for ZeroDivisionError and ValueError, which is what decimo actually raises, so except clauses written against decimal still catch.

Installing

pip install decimo

Wheels are built for macOS arm64 (macOS 11 and later) and for Linux on x86_64 and arm64 (glibc 2.35 and later), for CPython 3.13 and 3.14. On anything else, build from source with pixi:

git clone https://github.com/forfudan/decimo && cd decimo
pixi run -e py314 release        # or py313; the wheel lands in python/dist/
pip install python/dist/*.whl

Links

Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distributions

No source distribution files available for this release.See tutorial on generating distribution archives.

Built Distributions

If you're not sure about the file name format, learn more about wheel file names.

decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-manylinux_2_35_x86_64.whl (1.4 MB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.14manylinux: glibc 2.35+ x86-64

decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-manylinux_2_35_aarch64.whl (1.3 MB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.14manylinux: glibc 2.35+ ARM64

decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (1.2 MB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.14macOS 11.0+ ARM64

decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-manylinux_2_35_x86_64.whl (1.4 MB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.13manylinux: glibc 2.35+ x86-64

decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-manylinux_2_35_aarch64.whl (1.3 MB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.13manylinux: glibc 2.35+ ARM64

decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (1.2 MB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.13macOS 11.0+ ARM64

File details

Details for the file decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-manylinux_2_35_x86_64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-manylinux_2_35_x86_64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 c8406120f69113e6cb019cbc7158facedf34695c93109b38c98b1cb08c2c5340
MD5 9ada46c0644de7766b43f3fef02a2ec6
BLAKE2b-256 2beaca839831965d6930cdd137a86cb91bfa5941c85f16ea37575dca3673d6ec

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-manylinux_2_35_x86_64.whl:

Publisher: release_python.yaml on forfudan/decimo

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-manylinux_2_35_aarch64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-manylinux_2_35_aarch64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 776230dfe742e2c759e9b73ad1a43de80c5e3e5656d0007af99ad42c7113bada
MD5 7c9066573941acf24896f9dc32d5b5b1
BLAKE2b-256 9230f20a424bb6d1eaecd17333e4f62f11abdacc3e5beeaf397f8159acf0ac70

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-manylinux_2_35_aarch64.whl:

Publisher: release_python.yaml on forfudan/decimo

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 a079346792e511823f02e9f94746c695d629252e5de1a78f711f053b95826b0c
MD5 a10597449c7c9dfd2a9b0fcdf90c458e
BLAKE2b-256 40a997a88e4936e7f65111727fcfe34eefc88ed812ac11edfd0cc228269b434d

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp314-cp314-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl:

Publisher: release_python.yaml on forfudan/decimo

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-manylinux_2_35_x86_64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-manylinux_2_35_x86_64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 801edcbbb2fb2fc1b54c219c3f4c34045a597e710019c33a3e40e838f297e75e
MD5 f6ceb5ac617d402db5233bc7759ef9ab
BLAKE2b-256 1b495d7aa97c3e08ae688634a05bec2d5fd18eb7e412e0736a4e6516272dcb85

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-manylinux_2_35_x86_64.whl:

Publisher: release_python.yaml on forfudan/decimo

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-manylinux_2_35_aarch64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-manylinux_2_35_aarch64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 47191d87c0e7b49f8be2b7188b8f5e3f9a5126f996622df78443236a33733167
MD5 bfa7417e9c28831418b09abbaf7719b9
BLAKE2b-256 e7f76a585aedd5c7da10840a5e22c53b015d6ba7c7c59b6ba0525e5081c1acf4

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-manylinux_2_35_aarch64.whl:

Publisher: release_python.yaml on forfudan/decimo

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 09aa238727ef16b16d3588668ce60ac9b2f8d194c197d75377167b13ff869044
MD5 65fa9db056451df3c0a17bbcd420ee7f
BLAKE2b-256 9dc2c123eaef67da2250efee116caffcbdd8f9e62a44c5d846c8d668e7c389b7

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for decimo-0.14.0.dev20260829231044-cp313-cp313-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl:

Publisher: release_python.yaml on forfudan/decimo

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

0.14.0

6 files

This release

0.1.0.dev0

1 file

Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page