On Oct 30, 2:58 pm, David Roe <roed.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think this is a bug: the type of the result should be consistent.
> David
Consistent doesn't mean constant. Functions like "sin" are generic
functions that dispatch on input type:
sin(1.2) should return a float, not a symbolic expression (that would
be unacceptably inefficient in numerical contexts).
sin(1) should return a symbolic expression because there's no
indication an approximation is supposed to be made.
sin(0) is ambiguous that way, so a return type is chosen that behaves
well in either context.
Perhaps it shouldn't be "int" but "symbolic" is a bad choice.
There probably already is (and otherwise there should be) something
like
numerical.sin: always return numerical result
(probably needs precision parameters and parent of return value)
symbolic.sin: always return symbolic result
and then the top-level sin dispatches over those via a convenient
heuristic.
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