Signed zeros: is this a bug?

[Paul Rubin]

"Mark Dickinson" <dickinsm at gmail.com> writes:
> By the way, I don't suppose that anybody would be interested in
> a rewritten cmath for Python 2.6?  It wouldn't be hard for me to
> rewrite what I already have in C, and add suitable documentation
> and tests.

I can't speak for the developers but my personal opinion is that this
is worthwhile.  I'm pretty Common Lisp and Scheme specify the branch
cuts and I believe Java does the same.  That is to help with the
consistency and predicability of program behavior as well as to help
various numerical algorithms.  C has a different goal, which is to be
a semi-portable assembly language, putting priority instead on
minimizing intermediation between the programmer and the machine,
instead of on predicability.  Python should take the approach of the
higher level languages and implement this stuff precisely, instead of
just going along with whatever loose semantics the underlying C
implementation happens to supply.