Lie wrote: > Would all these problems with floating points be a rational reason to > add rational numbers support in Python or Py3k? (pun not intended) > > I agree, there are some numbers that is rationals can't represent > (like pi, phi, e) but these rounding problems also exist in floating > points, and rational numbers wouldn't be so easily fooled by something > like 1 / 3 * 3, and 1/10 (computer) is exactly 0.1 (human). The first > problem with rational is that to get an infinite precision rational, > the language would have to have an infinite length integers, which > Python have given us. The second problem with rationals is to keep > rationals in its most simple, trivial form. This can be solved with a > good GCD algorithm, which can also be a nice addition to Python's math > library.
http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0239/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
