[racket] Question about round

From: Eli Barzilay (eli at barzilay.org)
Date: Fri Sep 30 09:25:50 EDT 2011

A few minutes ago, Doug Williams wrote:
> Another such annoyance is than (min 1 +inf.0) => 1.0 - because if
> any argument is inexact, the result is inexact. I don't think this
> makes sense in the case of infinities. Infinities are very useful as
> initial values for things that are being minimized or maximized, but
> there is always the need for inexact->exact to protect against the
> (unexpected) coercion.

I agree with that (although less frequent than the previous one), but
the problem is that `exact-min' is no longer a good name for it...


> This is all from the original R5RS and continued in R6RS - but, we
> aren't that language.
> 
> Could we get an exception to the coercions in the case of +/-inf.0?
> Or an alternative min/max that don't do it?

My guess is that changes in this area are hopeless, since they'll
break a bunch of code in unexpected ways.  (Not to mention the TR
guys, they might get out from such a change with a PTSD.)

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!


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