Nasty typo in PEP 238 (revised)

Tim Peters tim.one at home.com
Fri Jul 27 18:54:29 EDT 2001


[Robin Becker]
> when/if the grand unification happens what will math.cos do with 1+3j?
> What will floor do with 1.3+0j etc etc etc. Presumably a Timbot thread
> is even now busily extending all math functions to the complex domain.

My belief is that the vast majority of Python users are best served by the
current behavior of never getting a complex result from non-complex inputs
unless they explicitly invoke functions from the cmath module.  But that's a
question you didn't ask (although you should have).  A more interesting
question is whether math.acos(2) should continue to whine.

The flip side is that a minority of users would be better served if they
didn't have to import cmath to get complex results from non-complex inputs.
This is one of several cases where Fear of State forces a minority to suffer
in order to avoid surprising the majority.

> I eagerly await the arrival of quaternions.

So write a PEP <wink>.





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