From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 25527 invoked from network); 14 Sep 1999 17:06:42 -0000 Received: from sunsite.auc.dk (130.225.51.30) by ns1.primenet.com.au with SMTP; 14 Sep 1999 17:06:42 -0000 Received: (qmail 8976 invoked by alias); 14 Sep 1999 17:06:33 -0000 Mailing-List: contact zsh-workers-help@sunsite.auc.dk; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk X-No-Archive: yes X-Seq: 7829 Received: (qmail 8968 invoked from network); 14 Sep 1999 17:06:26 -0000 From: "Bart Schaefer" Message-Id: <990914170616.ZM27029@candle.brasslantern.com> Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 17:06:16 +0000 In-Reply-To: <9909141556.AA22292@ibmth.df.unipi.it> Comments: In reply to Peter Stephenson "Floating point support?" (Sep 14, 5:56pm) References: <9909141556.AA22292@ibmth.df.unipi.it> X-Mailer: Z-Mail (5.0.0 30July97) To: zsh-workers@sunsite.auc.dk (Zsh hackers list) Subject: Re: Floating point support? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Sep 14, 5:56pm, Peter Stephenson wrote: } Subject: Floating point support? } } I'm thinking about adding some floating point support to zsh; this is just } to canvas opinions. My idea is to add a floating point parameter type } together with support in math evaluations [...] Problems that immediately come to mind: For one, suppose I have float-typed parameters x and y and I write for i in {$x..$y}; do or print *.<$x-$y> Another is that array subscripts are math-eval'd, and some pretty strange things may happen in any code that relies upon multiplication or division to compute subscripts if floating point gets involved (even if the result is rounded down). Not that I'm directly aware of any such code ... Then there's the (very minor) matter of associative arrays with numeric indices (which are represented by converting to strings) and expectations of accuracy when indexing those with the result of floating-point math (the problem being that there shouldn't be any expectation of accuracy). I'm also a bit dubious of making floating point precision dependent on the size of the integer type, but if it doesn't bother you ... } - Does anyone object to sullying the integral purity of zsh with decimal } points and exponents? Plainly from the standpoint of purity, not I. } - What about functions? We could supply some basic maths functions, or } could put them in a loadable module I'd vote for the module, though it should be in the builtin modules list for a static compile. } which would require yet more support for hooks We could treat it like a Windoze DLL and simply load the module named "math" (or "float" or something); if users want other special functions they have add them to a module with that same name. Maybe we could put in support for any module to load another one later in the module path, for creation of such augmented modules. -- Bart Schaefer Brass Lantern Enterprises http://www.well.com/user/barts http://www.brasslantern.com