This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 77 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 77 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.
Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote: > R5RS tries to make exactness an independent property from the value. > IMHO it goes too far in allowing inexact arguments to certain > operations. > > Let's consider R5RS operations defined on integers which might be > inexact (I think these are all): > A. odd? even? integer->char > C. gcd lcm > D. numerator denominator Yes, these are problematic in that the answer is useless. > B. quotient remainder modulo But where's the problem here? The answer will necessarily be approximate, but should still be useful. Consider the per capita income of the USA in whole dollars, which is the quotient of two inexact integers. > In no case "an integer number, known exactly or not" or "a rational > number, known exactly or not" is a sensible domain for an arithmetic > function. It's entirely reasonable for arithmetic functions like division and addition. What's the total population of the EEC countries? What's the density of carbon? These kinds of questions can be answered reasonably and practically with inexact integers. -- Bradd W. Szonye http://www.szonye.com/bradd