About Rational Number (PEP 239/PEP 240)

[George Sakkis]

On Dec 15, 6:52 pm, greg <g... at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

> So while rationals might be useful to have available for
> some things, you should have to explicitly ask for them.
> Returning rationals from '/' applied to integers would
> be a bad idea, for example.

>From my reading of the PEP, it doesn't suggest such automatic
coercions (neither rejects them explicitly though). Given the huge
discussions about integer vs true division, it would be very
controversial to suggest implicit rational division.

Regardless, a builtin (or at least standard library) rational type
would be nice to have. Of course folks that *really need* rationals
are already using some 3rd party library, but for the rest of us it
would be an improvement in several cases where currently floats are
used, just like the motivation for Decimals. Only difference seems to
be that there aren't so many or compelling use cases for rationals as
for decimals (mainly money counting).

George