[racket] TR: predicate for a Float ?

On Jan 6, 2012, at 8:39 AM, John Clements wrote:

> 
> On Jan 5, 2012, at 5:30 PM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 1:00 AM, John Clements <clements at brinckerhoff.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Examining the difference between Inexact-Real and Float yields this:
>>> 
>>>> (:type Float)
>>> (U Float-Positive-Zero Float-Negative-Zero Float-Nan Positive-Float Negative-Float)
>>>> (:type Inexact-Real)
>>> (U Float-Positive-Zero Float-Negative-Zero Float-Nan Positive-Float Negative-Float Single-Flonum-Positive-Zero Single-Flonum-Negative-Zero Single-Flonum-Nan Positive-Single-Flonum Negative-Single-Flonum)
>>> 
>>> ...which actually made me laugh out loud.  Is there a predicate I can use instead of 'inexact-real?' that checks whether a number belongs to the type Float?
>> 
>> You can use `flonum?' as the predicate for `Float', which excludes
>> single-precision floats.  But why do you want to exclude them?
> 
> I have no desire to exclude them. After inspecting the expansion of various types such as Real, I concluded that Float was the term for a floating-point representation, but clearly I was mistaken. I have to say, the numeric tower in TR is ... impressive.  :)

Three thoughts:

1) Not all of the types printed in (:print-type Foo) are necessarily bound in the user code, right? I tried at one point substituting the result of (:print-type something-or-other) for something-or-other, and got a message about an unbound variable.
2) It would be great to have a one-sentence description of each type.  In my case, for instance, I clearly did not deduce that the 'single' in 'Positive-Single-Flonum' referred to single-precision.
3) What would be *really* awesome would be a tool that accepted a function and a desired output type, and pruned the type of the function so that I could discover what kind of input I had to provide in order to get that kind of output. I find myself repeatedly plowing through enormous types trying to find a clause that will do what I want.

Just thoughts,

John
 
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