Fractions are constructed using either ints or doubles. In the case of
ints, the numerator and denominator are passed (or the denominator is
assumed to be one). Constructing fractions from doubles is more algorithmic
work: if I pass a known fixed quantity such as 0.6 of course it will not be
hard for the constructor to determine that is the equivalent of 3 / 5 .
However if doubles are being passed of unknown precision, then I may want
to request a max value on the denominator, or a precision within which the
simplest fraction should be returned, or even the maximum iterations in the
computation.
I think of those as qualitatively very different activities so I called
them ofInt and ofDouble. The example I had in mind was probably Complex,
where we have ofPolar and ofCartesian. I suppose you are right, in this
case the hard typing of the passed variables alone could invoke either an
int or double based method while with Complex, both constructors are taking
doubles.
You do then have some very similar methods, for example of(int a, int b)
will be an integer fraction with a on top and b on bottom; while calling
of(double a, int b) will produce a fraction that approximates double a with
max denominator b.
Those two processes are so different that it might be more clarifying to
distinguish them as ofInt(int a, int b) and ofDouble(double a, int b)
Eric
On Fri, Dec 28, 2018 at 4:33 AM Gilles <gil...@harfang.homelinux.org> wrote:
> Hello Eric.
>
> On Thu, 27 Dec 2018 17:00:15 -0800, Eric Barnhill wrote:
> > I am overloading:
> >
> > public static BigFraction ofInt(final BigInteger num) {
> > return new BigFraction(num, BigInteger.ONE);
> > }
> >
> > public static BigFraction ofInt(BigInteger num, BigInteger den) {
> > return new BigFraction(num, den);
> > }
> >
> > private BigFraction(BigInteger num, BigInteger den) {
> >
> > Did my comment not give that impression?
>
> I was in fact wondering why "ofInt" rather than just "of".
>
> Best,
> Gilles
>
> >> [...]
>
>
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