[Edu-sig] new python // and /

[Guido van Rossum]

On 5/26/06, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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).

Rationals are easy to implement and easy to understand from a
mathematical POV, but not practical when it comes to computing your
taxes. ABC used rationals and it was not a success (except amongst
mathematicians :-).

Floating point decimal is a much better choice.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)