A use for integer quotients

[Stephen Horne]

On 23 Jul 2001 21:48:57 GMT, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk
<qrczak at knm.org.pl> wrote:

>I've never seen / as integer division in mathematics. The only notation
>I know is
>
>  |  a  |
>  |  -  |
>  |_ b _|

How about ÷ - and how about 'fractions' (ie rationals with integer
numerator and denominator).

I've been here already - mathematicians use the same set of operators
whatever set of values. They exact representations aren't available to
simple ASCII text files, so we use a single alternate representation.
The point is that we should the same symbol for the same meaning,
exactly the same as mathemeticians. When a mathematician asks 'I can't
find a divide symbol, how do I do that?' the answer should be simple -
it should not depend on which set of values he happens to be working
in at the time.

The fact that we need to choose an alternative symbol should not be
seen as a chance to break with principles that mathematicians have
applied successfuly since well before Christs time.