What exactly is "exact" (was Clean Singleton Docstrings)

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 18 Jul 2016 11:25 pm, Random832 wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016, at 00:46, Ben Finney wrote:
>> What is “those”? The measurement is imprecise, the observations are
>> inexact.
>> 
>> It makes no sense to say that a number is inexact. Exactness is not a
>> property of a number.
> 
> There's no reason it shouldn't be a property of an object of a numeric
> type available in a programming environment though.

Yes, there is a reason.

Objects of numeric types in programming environments are intended to model
numbers. Since numbers are not "exact" or "inexact" (but only
calculations), then adding an "exact" attribute to the number makes as much
sense as adding attributes "colour", "weight", or "flavour".



-- 
Steven
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.