On 3/18/2010 12:34 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:27:06 am Glenn Linderman wrote:
>
>
>>> Do you envisage any problems from allowing this instead?
>>>
>>>
>>>>>> Decimal('1.1')< 2.2
>>>>>>
>>> True
>>>
>> Yes.
>>
>> As any non-naïve float user is aware, the proper form of float
>> comparisons is not to use< or> or == or !=, but rather, instead of
>> using< (to follow along with your example), one should use:
>>
>> Decimal('1.1') - 2.2< epsilon
>>
> And yet we allow
>
> 1.1< 2.2
>
> instead of forcing users to do the "proper form". One can only wonder
> why the various standards (actual and de-facto) for floating point
> allows comparisons at all.
>
Hard to tell
1.1 < 2.2
from the second line of
diff = 1.1 - 2.2
diff < epsilon
Hard to enforce the "proper form", without being omniscient, and the
"proper form" isn't always as simple as my example, to be truly proper
often requires a lot more code (and a lot more omniscience).
I'm +1 on adding an exception for Decimal/float comparisons, -0 on
allowing it to be turned off to achieve compatible behavior, since
Raymond pointed out that the compatible sorting behavior isn't stable in
the presence of int, Decimal, and float.
> But they do, and so does Python, and frankly even if the only reason is
> to satisfy lazy coders who don't have a requirement for high accuracy,
> then that's a good reason in my book, and one equally applicable to
> Decimal and float.
>
A point well understood, but I personally would rather force
Decimal/float comparisons to be explicitly converted to be lazily
compared, if the arithmetic operations are forced to be explicit.
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