> You're still making the unjustified assumption that the choice of > cohort member is productive information. The examples here have > shown that it is not, and it leads to bad results. Things are much > simpler by not trying to make questionable distinctions between > 1000000000000 and 1e12.
You are quite right to question that last case (I think there is plenty of evidence that the choice of exponent is important and productive 'in real life' -- for example, the most common reason for calculators being returned as 'broken' is when a calculation such as 1.23 + 1.27 does not give 2.50). In that last case, indeed, (and perhaps naively) when I designed the Rexx language I decided that any 'positive exponent' case should be treated as though it were an integer: 1E+9 in the underlying representation was (and is, in classic Rexx) displayed/printed as 1000000000. I now think that was a mistake -- it's not simpler; it is a 'special rule' that often confuses. If one sees a number such as 1.23E+9 (as in 1.23 GHz for example), it's very misleading to convert that for display as 1230000000 (units Hz). It gets even worse in computing contexts, with all the usual arguments as to whether a GB is 1000 MB or 1024 MB (etc.). So the general idea is: the string representation should provide a reversible and exact mirror of the underlying decimal number. Your worry about the divide case is valid, but that is a concern about the division rules, not about the string representation (the division rules could have been written to always return an integer if the exponent would be positive and fits -- but that introduces a different set of problems). [Separately .. I am having problems with my subscription to this discussion; I am getting digests but cannot convert to individual e-mails as I don't have a password. So please keep cc: me on replies!] Mike Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU _______________________________________________ Es-discuss mailing list Es-discuss@mozilla.org https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
