[racket-dev] [racket] Question about round

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Matthias Felleisen
<matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>
> I sent this to Matthew privately but I think we need to be
> much more careful with 'interesting'. While you are right
> about the 'wired into our code' part, I think the two of
> you are wrong about the 'interesting' part.
>
> From a type perspective, the numeric tower comes with major
> flaws and it would be wonderful if a language that divorces
> itself from the old flawed Scheme world could make a clean
> cut and do better.

I didn't mean to say that this wasn't interesting. The uninteresting
thing, in my mind, is coping with the fallout of the specific changes
that Vincent proposed.

Some larger effort at a better design is whole different beast.

Robby

> But I am also the person who preaches 'the path from here to
> there' and agree that the 'wired' argument for the existing
> code base and outside consumers tells us that Racket isn't
> the language that can fix these mistakes.
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 30, 2011, at 12:32 PM, Robby Findler wrote:
>
>> This is my opinion, too.
>>
>> Robby
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
>>> I think this is a good change for the next language, but not for `#lang
>>> racket'.
>>>
>>> As confusing as the current `integer?' may be, I think its definition
>>> is deeply wired into our code, tests, and documentation. I may guess
>>> wrong, but my best estimate of the hassle for this change is that it's
>>> too much trouble for too little payoff, and we could spend our energy
>>> on more interesting things.
>>>
>>> At Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:59:25 -0400, Vincent St-Amour wrote:
>>>> On a more general note, do we really need inexact integers?
>>>>
>>>> The behavior of `integer?' is confusing, and I don't see especially
>>>> compelling reasons to keep it this way. The subject comes up every
>>>> couple of months on the mailing list, so we should do something about it.
>>>>
>>>> Here's a proposal:
>>>> `integer?' becomes the same as `exact-integer?' (which is kept for
>>>> backwards compatibility).
>>>> `positive-integer?' and `nonnegative-integer?' are added as
>>>> equivalents to their `exact' counterparts.
>>>> `inexact-integer?' is added, to cover for the use case of checking is
>>>> an inexact number has been rounded.
>>>>
>>>> I volunteer to implement this if we agree that this is the right
>>>> thing.
>>>>
>>>> Vincent
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> At Fri, 30 Sep 2011 07:16:22 -0600,
>>>> 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.
>>>>>
>>>>> 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?
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 6:53 AM, Matthias Felleisen
>>>> <matthias at ccs.neu.edu>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> exact-round is preferred.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sep 30, 2011, at 8:51 AM, Eli Barzilay wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yesterday, Ryan Culpepper wrote:
>>>>>>>> The pragmatic answer is you generally have to write
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>   (inexact->exact (round x))
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> which is annoying, but no one has yet bothered to add a standard
>>>>>>>> library function for this, as far as I know.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> [From the annoyed side, especially since that thing tends to come in
>>>>>>> bunches which can make some quick code look much heavier than it is:]
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Maybe it's time to add something for that?  `eround'?  (But even
>>>>>>> `exact-round' would be better than the above.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
>>>>>>>                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!
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