Hi all First, some background. I've recently tried to port a certain library that manipulates dates from C. Some of the core functions contain heavy integer math (very long formulae), and after implementing them I tested them to see the give the desired results. I got very odd results, which surprised me since I copied the formula letter to letter.
I decided to investigate further, and after trying to evaluate several expressions in the python console, I realized it was the integer division's fault. For some reason, the integer division behaves unexpectedly for negative integers. Looking deeper in the python PEPs, I saw that division on integers is defined as: idiv(a, b) = floor(fdiv(a, b)). This non-quotient division leads to some odd results, e.g. Python seems to think -3/2+3/2 = -1. This is clearly, and correct me if I'm mistaken - wrong. Now, seeing as Python 3000 is getting closer, and backwards compatibility isn't an issue, I believe it would be a good idea to change the // operator (which will be used for integer division) to behave as quotient, i.e.: a // b = trunc(a / b) Dany _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
