[Michael Hudson]
> ...
> Having ddd.ddd be a rational bothers me. *No* langauge does that at
> present, do they?
ABC (Python's closest predecessor) did. 6.02e23 and 1.073242e-301 were also
exact rationals. *All* numeric literals were. This explains why they aren't
in Python, but doesn't explain exactly why: i.e., it didn't work well in
ABC, but it's unclear whether that's because rationals suck, or because you
got rationals even when 10,000 years of computer history <wink> told you that
"." would get you something else.
> Also, writing rational numbers as decimal floats strikes me as a
> bit loopy. Is
>
> 0.33333333
>
> 1/3 or 3333333/10000000?
Neither, it's 33333333/100000000 (which is what I expect you intended for
your 2nd choice). Else
0.33333333 == 33333333/100000000
would be false, and
0.33333333 * 3 == 1
would be true, and those are absurd if both sides are taken as rational
notations. OTOH, it's possible to do rational<->string conversion with an
extended notation for "repeating decimals", e.g.
str(1/3) == "0.(3)"
eval("0.(3)") == 1/3
would be possible (indeed, I've implemented it in my own rational classes,
but not by default since identifying "the repeating part" in rat->string can
take space proportional to the magnitude of the denominator).
but-"."-is-mnemonic-for-the-"point"-in-"floating-point"-ly y'rs - tim
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