From: "knu (Akinori MUSHA)" Date: 2013-05-22T11:49:13+09:00 Subject: [ruby-core:55105] [ruby-trunk - Feature #8430] Rational number literal Issue #8430 has been updated by knu (Akinori MUSHA). I think it should be added as an operator rather than a literal notation. A literal should not look like an expression, or it will fail you when you find out you have to give up the // notation in order to constify a numerator and/or a denominator of a rational literal like that. Also, I guess runtime cost would not change much if it were introduced as operator. ---------------------------------------- Feature #8430: Rational number literal https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/8430#change-39472 Author: mrkn (Kenta Murata) Status: Open Priority: Normal Assignee: matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) Category: core Target version: current: 2.1.0 I would like to propose a new literal syntax for rational numbers. The implementation is available in my github repository: https://github.com/mrkn/ruby/commit/8ca0c9a53593e55d67f509fc403df616e2276e3a This patch implements a notation that consists of an integer, "//", and another integer, in a row. The first integer is the numerator, and the second is the denominator. Whitespaces are permitted between them. For example: 1 // 2 == Rational(1, 2) 1 // 1 == Rational(1, 1) 0 // 1 == Rational(0, 1) "0 // 0" occurs syntax error. I think this new syntax isn't conflict with an empty regexp because this implementation doesn't treat // as a binary operator. -- http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/