[Python-Dev] Re: [Edu-sig] Rational Division

[Eric S. Raymond]

Tim Peters <tim_one@email.msn.com>:
> Looks natural for Python!  I'm not sure what "/" should *do* in the Brave
> New World, though.  Floating-point has been the conventional answer so far,
> but I'd like to take another look at what Scheme does (not sure what the std
> sez, but every Scheme I've ever used treated integer division as returning a
> rational).  The *prime* motivation here seems to be that "7/3" not lose
> catastrophic amounts of information silently; other clear choices are "lose
> none" (rationals) and "maybe lose a little in a way that's very hard to
> explain" (floating point).

I agree with you in preferring the "let's do rationals" answer.  Seems
to me I recall one of the other points in the Alice presentation was that
non-techies find floating point obscure and think of simple fractions 
as atoms.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His
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