From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2001-07-29T22:50:56+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:18742] Re: Ruby as opposed to Python?

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:18712] Re: Ruby as opposed to Python?"
    on 01/07/29, Paul Prescod <paulp@ActiveState.com> writes:

|For those who don't know, the Python world is currently engaged in a
|heated argument about whether to change division from 5/2==2 to 5/2==2.5
|Ruby has the same int/int behaviour and I have a feeling that you'll
|have the same argument someday. Baschino claims that Ruby's support for
|overriding basic type behaviours will solve that problem automatically.
|I don't believe that is true.

Even though it's easy to change the behavior of "/" in Ruby, and some
library actually changes it (mathn library makes 1/2 to return
rational number "1/2"), changing global behavior is too much in most
of the cases, so that it might not be a magic solution.

|I tend to think that both Python and Ruby made the wrong decision but
|many people (especially those who have a long history with programming
|in statically typed languages) disagree with me. I am therefore one of
|those that are glad that Guido is biting the bullet even if it breaks
|code.

Ah, you mean you believe 5/2 should be 2.5, do you?

I don't believe it.  Any operation on two exact numbers should not
result in inexact number, unless explicitly specified.  So 5/2 may
return 5/2 (rational number) in the future, but not 2.5.

							matz.