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Toppling the numeric tower

Bengt Richter bokr at accessone.com
Fri Jul 27 05:11:52 EDT 2001 
On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 21:21:55 GMT, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

>"Tim Hochberg" <tim.hochberg at ieee.org> writes:
>
>> For discussion purposes, I'm going to assume that some forms of PEP 237, 238
>> and 239 are eventually adopted. In that case, integers and longs will be
>> unified. The integers can then be completely emebedded into rationals. This
>> leaves us with just one level of precision/range for exact numbers (infinite
>> more or less) and one level of precision/range for inexact numbers (C
>> double). This allows the numeric tower to be knocked down and stirred around
>> to form a box:
>> 
>>    Real      Complex
>>       |               |
>> rRational cRational -- Rational (Exact)
>> rFloat          cFloat -- Float      (Inexact)
>
>I just don't see much use for complex rational...  So then we're back
>to my original tower (with rational).
>
For a different slant on diagramming all this, please see my post
"Number Tree (was: Re proposed language change ...(was: ...))"
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