On 20-Sep-09, at 10:43 PM, Craig Citro wrote:
> >>> My preference would be that factor works for all integers. It's not >>> like it's hard to factor 0 or anything. We just return the >>> factorization object [(0,1)]. >> > > I'm pretty indifferent on this, though mildly against -- so -0, I > think. Strong +1 to not throwing an error, though -- I call map(factor, list) all the time. >> I think I would prfer the empty list of primes and a "unit" of 0: >> > > If we're going to add it, I'm strongly on the other side of the fence: > I'd much prefer 0 show up in the list of primes, and not as the unit. > After all, 0 is a prime (in any domain, which is probably the case if > we're asking to factor), but it's only a unit in the zero ring -- and > we're unlikely to be factoring there. :) Seriously, though, if one of > the return values of a function is called "unit," I'd be really > annoyed if dividing by it raised a ZeroDivisionError. I agree with this reasoning -- the unit part should really be a unit :) Nick --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
