Consistency is good. A case could be made for either truncating to integer, or rounding to integer.
I'm inclined toward round - since int() is a builtin (round isn't),
which makes it easy to get the truncate behavior. And one is more
likely to get a mathematically sensible result.
On the other hand, changing long-standing behavior may wake the dragons.
I don't like bug compatibility switches, but in this case a "use
Math::Biging qw/roundtoint/" (or whatever you choose) might be worth
considering. Unless you're up for dragonfire...
On 19-Aug-21 04:17, Peter John Acklam wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I would like some input on how the Math::BigInt module and bigint pragma
> should handle non-integers. The current behaviour is rather inconsistent.
>
> The new() constructor converts a non-integer to a Math::BigInt NaN:
>
> $ perl -MMath::BigInt -wle 'print Math::BigInt -> new("3.16")'
> NaN
>
> A math operation that returns a non-integer, returns a Math::BigInt
> with the
> truncated value:
>
> $ perl -MMath::BigInt -wle 'print Math::BigInt -> new("10") ->
> bsqrt()'
> 3
>
> Math::BigInt with overloading of constants, leave a non-integer as an
> unmodified Perl scalar:
>
> $ perl -MMath::BigInt=:constant -wle 'print 3.16'
> 3.16
>
> However, when the "bigint" pragma is used for overloading constants, a
> non-integer becomes a Math::BigInt with the truncated value:
>
> $ perl -Mbigint -wle 'print 3.16'
> 3
>
> I'm not saying that all four cases should return the same value, but
> returning three different values seems too much. Any suggestions?
>
> Cheers,
> Peter
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