[Edu-sig] new python // and /

[kirby urner]

On 5/26/06, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
> I would just like to point out that Python (compared to Smalltalk)
> http://www.smalltalk.org/articles/article_20041008_a1.html
> has always done division wrong, and the new approach still does division
> wrong, IMHO, from a mathematical (not implementation) perspective.

Scheme also has a built in rational number type.  There's been some
discussion of building that in to Python, but my understanding is
that's being left to libraries at this point. We already have any
number of Rational Number implementations (I've written a few myself).

Adding a new decimal type (different from floating point) became the
focus instead (good choice of priorities IMO).

Are you subscribed to pydev by the way?  You seem inclined to redesign
Python in some fundamental way, and that's unlikely to happen as a
result of posts to edu-sig.  We tend to take Python as a given.

Kirby