On Sunday 04 September 2005 01:30 pm, Reinhold Birkenfeld wrote: > tiissa wrote: > > bill wrote: > >>>From 3.2 in the Reference Manual "The Standard Type Hierarchy": > >> > >> "Integers > >> These represent elements from the mathematical set of whole > >> numbers." > >> > >> The generally recognized definition of a 'whole number' is zero and the > >> positive integers. > > > > This term is ambiguous as it seems to be used for both natural numbers > > and signed numbers [1].
You realize, of course, that "natural numbers" don't include zero. ;-) This is a pretty serious nitpick, isn't it? "Integers" is a well defined mathematical concept, as well as a pretty well defined (but not coincident) computer science concept. It's probably worth mentioning that Python uses the *mathematical* definition of "integer" here -- or more precisely that Python "long integers" do, while regular "integers" are what are known as "long integers" in C. Okay. I guess that *is* pretty confusing. I think the manual is not so far off since "whole number" makes English sense, if not mathematical. Certainly, if I were explaining this to my kids I would say "whole" and not "integer" (I at least know they know what "whole" means). -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
