From: Philipp Meier <meier@...>
Date: 2002-12-28T00:10:08+09:00
Subject: Re: 1210 / 100 = 12? what?

On Fri, Dec 27, 2002 at 04:10:59PM +0900, Tom Sawyer wrote:
> On Thursday 26 December 2002 11:42 pm, Brian Wisti wrote:

> > If you can't tell by my stumbling over the phrasing of this problem, I
> > belong in the first camp.  For me in this case, POLS is sticking to the
> > initial types unless explicitly stating or absolutely required
> > otherwise.  This behavior is similar to that of other languages, so
> > somebody coming in from one of those other languages would be surprised
> > if "1210/10" did not return 12!
> 
> i do see your point, but i think it makes more sense for a strictly typed 
> langauge, rather than a dynamic one like ruby.

And then one could argue that 2/3 should return an instance of "Rational"
which correctly represents the Quotient 2/3 and neither  0.666* in a
language like Ruby. Even 10/100 can lead to strang results because 1/10
is periodic to a base of 2 (which most modern computers work with).

-billy.

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