On Tuesday, 24 October 2017 at 17:54:55 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:
For the record, I remember the points made:
* When converting across integral types, any failed coercion
yields a value essentially unrelated to the source. So we
deemed these unacceptable.
* When converting int to float or long to double, there is a
loss of accuracy - a float can represent all ints, but some of
them will be represented with approximation. But here there
_is_ a notion of "I'm okay with an approximation". So we deemed
these acceptable.
* When converting double to float, again there is a loss of
accuracy and also the risk of too large values. But there's
never a gross mistake - too large values are converted to
infinity, and otherwise an approximation occurs. This was also
deemed acceptable.
Folks with other design sensibilities might choose differently.
Actually I wasn't on board with this decision, but I accepted
it. But deeming it absurd is a bit of a stretch.
Thank you for the explanation. I understand the reasoning. It
seems strange to me that D is aiming at security concerning
memory management and integer arithmetic but not with respect to
the processing of floating-point entities.
To clarify: this topic was not the reason but only the occasion
for my ranting. It's just a pointed expression of my personal
impression that I got from a few discussions here.
I would like to stress that there are also people in the
community who do not reflexively dismiss every critical objection
from the outside. In this context, "problem realized, won't fix
nevertheless" seems to be a much better answer than denying
existence of problems brought up by new or less known people.
