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[Python-Dev] return type of __complex__

Chris Angelico rosuav at gmail.com
Mon Oct 22 05:25:45 CEST 2012 
On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Greg Ewing
<greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>
>> When you're dealing with numbers that represent real quantities, getting
>> a complex result is nearly always an error condition. Better to get an
>> exception at the point that occurs, than somewhere distant when the number
>> gets fed to %f formatting, or worse, no error at all, just a silently
>> generating garbage results.
>
>
> Yeah. I don't think Inland Revenue would be very impressed if
> I tried to tell them I had imaginary tax-to-pay, advantageous
> though it might be for me.

Unless the IRS instructs you to submit the square root of your income,
I doubt that this will ever come up. Amusing though the notion be.

There really aren't that many situations where a program will be
completely oblivious of complex/imaginary numbers and be able to
encounter them... are there?

ChrisA
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