From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2009-04-29T05:59:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Detecting -0.0

Sebastian Hungerecker wrote:
> Joel VanderWerf wrote:
>> Oops. That never seemed right to me. Float#equal? should hide the fact
>> that floats are allocated, and not immediate.
> 
> Why would it? It doesn't do it for any other type of object. And if it would, 
> what would be the difference to == ?

Because it is only a quirk of cpu architecture that forces them to be 
allocated rather than immediate. Maybe some future ruby implementation 
(on >32 bit systems) will use immediate double-precision floats. Other 
types will never be immediate.

The difference to #== would be the same as today: #== performs numeric 
type conversions (and consequently erases the difference between 0.0 and 
-0.0). But #equal? never would.

-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407