On Thu, 13 Aug 2015, Nathann Cohen wrote:
All Sage methods that return integers should return Sage integer
elements. Especially those that count something.
Do you know how to enforce this standard? Can it be done in the
buildbot?
We cannot have something like that without making sure that all Sage
functions will slowly converge and implement it. We have thousands of
functions that do not respect this, and a standard is of little use
unless it is respected.
But in any case it is better if these kind of things are pre-defined, at
least as a default rule. Now I know that my suggestion to change the type
to Integer is right, unless someone explains why this-and-this function
should be an exception.
* * *
Is it so that sage -t basically just compares strings? Can someone make a
program that checks what expected outputs "seems like an integer", runs
the corresponding test and tests the type of output? I.e. from
sage: Foo = Bar()
sage: Foo.xyzzy()
42
runs
Foo = Bar()
type(Foo.xyzzy())
and says when the output is not of type Integer? Of course it will give
false positives, as 42 might be an element of GF(101), but it could at
least help finding functions to correct.
--
Jori Mäntysalo
