On 2016-05-22, Random832 <random...@fastmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, May 22, 2016, at 11:52, Jon Ribbens wrote: >> No, it *adheres* to the principle of least surprise. Floats appearing >> out of nowhere is surprising. Python 2's behaviour adhered to the >> principle, and Python 3's breaks it. > > Disregarding for the moment the particular imperfections of the float > representation (which would be gone if we used Fraction instead), this > is only true if the concrete types of results are regarded as part of > the result rather than as an implementation detail for how best to > return the requested value. > > I think it would be entirely reasonable for Fractions to not only appear > out of nowhere, but to *disappear* when an operation on them yields a > value which is an integer. > > Values are more important than types. Types are less important than > values.
This would be true if we had some Grand Unified Lossless Number Type. Unfortunately, we don't, and we're not likely to any time soon. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
