Fun with numbers - dammit, but I want a cast!

[Hannu Kankaanpää]

Andrew Koenig <ark at acm.org> wrote in message news:<yu99fzk8715z.fsf at tinker.research.att.com>...
>         2) At the beginning of your source file, execute:
> 
>                 from __future__ import division
> 
>           Python is going to change its behavior so that division always
>           returns a floating-point value.  This statement causes that new
>           behavior to occur now.

By the way, do you know a reason why after doing

from __future__ import division

this still happens:

>>> 3.0 // 2
1.0

Wouldn't it be more convenient to present the resulting whole
number as an integer now, since division operation on integers
works correctly? At least IMO the operation

>>> 3.0 // 2
1

would be more convenient and natural, and floor division could then be
used to get array indices for example:

print arr[position // scale]

Not that I -really- care either way, since casting division result
to int isn't verbose either. Just curious, if you or anyone
knows the reason for new floor div working this way.