From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2007-01-09T11:43:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Why is there a seperate Math class?

Hi,

In message "Re: Why is there a seperate Math class?"
    on Tue, 9 Jan 2007 11:21:21 +0900, Daniel Finnie <danfinnie@optonline.net> writes:

|I have to think this is the first time I've ever really disagreed with 
|matz and don't really understand his logic.

Probably it's highly influenced by the languages we speak.
Unfortunately, English is not the only language on Earth.

|If I were to ask someone for the length of the word apples, I would say 
|"What is the length of apples?"  In ruby, this would be "apples".length.

I would say "apples no nagasa wa?" in Japanese (nagasa = length).

|If I were to ask someone for the sine of, say, 90, I would say "What is 
|the sine of 90?"  In ruby, this would be Math.sin(90) even though the 
|structure of the sentence is the same as for "apples" above.

I would say "sin(90) wa?".  See?  It's different. ;-)

Besides that, and far more importantly, Ruby honors UNIX math library
(libm).  All functions in Math module are found in libm.

							matz.