Case-sensitivity: why -- or why not? (was Re: Damnation!)

[Michal Wallace (sabren)]

On Sun, 21 May 2000, Tim Peters wrote:

> I'm wholly comfortable with 1/2 == 0 myself, but am equally comfortable with
> rationals, floats, constructives or BCD, and can easily see why 1/2 == 0 is
> a bad idea for computer newbies (more, it seems a bad idea for just about
> everyone except system programmers -- which we both were when this decision
> was made).  So I'm not just flaming Randy <wink>.


Somewhere, back in time, I used a programming language (turbo pascal? GW-BASIC?) that
had three division operators.

   % was modulus
   \ was integer division
   / yielded a decimal number

Maybe the last two were reversed, but I think "x/y" did what a newbie
would expect, and people who always wanted an integer could typecast
or use the \ operator.

Cheers,

- Michal
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