ANN: Experimental Number Types (Integer, Rational, Floats)

[Paul Prescod]

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> from mx.Number import *
> f = Float(3.141)
> r1 = Rational(3.141)
> r2 = Rational(2, 3)
> i = Integer("1231231231231231231231231")

Wouldn't you more often make a rational from a string instead of a
float? The float loses precision and the rational loses performance so
you've got the worst of both worlds. :)

> * Please try out the rational type and see if it fits your
>   needs -- the results are sometimes surprising (due to the
>   IEEE representations of floats); I'm sure this proof of
>   concept will raise a few more questions regarding the
>   usefulness of switching to rationals for literals like
>   1.123.

This seems to come back to my point above. If you made the rational from
strings instead of floats, the IEEE representation for floats would be
irrelevant, wouldn't it?

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