On 2003-07-08 at 10:15+0200 Jerzy Karczmarczuk wrote:
If it's a _Rational_, surely you want it to be exactly the same as you get for 31415926536%10000000000?
No. If 'you' means concretely me, then no. Simply no. Writing pi = 3.1415926536 :: Rational
and expecting to continue the computations with an exact fraction 31415926536%10000000000, with the well known explosion of Nums & Dens seems pragmatically silly.
Ah, well, I'd say that writing pi = 3.1415926536 :: Rational is just misleading -- we all know jolly well that pi isn't a rational, so anyone who writes that deserves what they get. Now, if you were to write pi = 3.1415926536 :: Real I'd be happy to argue over just what the conversion is supposed to do. Unfortunately we don't have Real (in libraries as far as I remember -- if you have a continued fraction implementation of it, it ought to go to the libraries list). Cheers, Jón -- Jón Fairbairn Jon.Fairbairn@cl.cam.ac.uk 31 Chalmers Road jf@cl.cam.ac.uk Cambridge CB1 3SZ +44 1223 570179 (after 14:00 only, please!)