On Thursday 25 April 2013 09:25:30 Graydon Hoare wrote: > While it's true that people often pronounce % as "mod", the fact is most > of the languages in the lineage we're looking at treat it as "rem". > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulo_operation > > 50 languages in that list expose 'remainder' and 19 of them map it to > '%'. As well, as a "systems language", it _is_ salient that the > instructions on the CPUs we're targeting and the code generator IR for > said machines (LLVM) expose a remainder operation, not a modulo one. Of > the 35 languages that expose _anything_ that does "proper mod", only > interpreted/script languages (TCL, Perl, Python, Ruby, Lua, Rexx, Pike > and Dart) call it %. That's not our family. I'm sorry; if we're arguing > over "what the % symbol means", it means remainder in "our" language > family (the one including C, C++, C#, D, Go, F#, Java, Scala). > > (more gruesome comparisons available here: > http://rigaux.org/language-study/syntax-across-languages/Mthmt.html#MthmtcDB > QAM )
Good argument. > There are other questions to answer in this thread. We had a complex set > of conversations yesterday on IRC concerning exposure of multiple named > methods for the "other variants" -- ceiling, floor and truncating > division, in particular. We may need to expose all 3, and it might be > the case that calling any of them 'quot' is just misleading; it's not > clear to me yet whether there's a consistent method _name_ to assign '/' > to (floating point divide seems to do the opposite of integer divide on > chips that have both). > > But I don't think it's wise to map % to 'mod' if we're exposing both > 'mod' and 'rem'. That's a separate issue and one with (I think) a > simpler answer for us. 'system_divide' or 'hardware_divide' would make it clear that it's intended to do what the hardware provides, if that's what matters. Or 'c_div' if it's meant to be C compatible. _______________________________________________ Rust-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/rust-dev
