On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 11:17:33AM -0700, Johann Hibschman wrote:
> Right.  I worked this out right after I posted that.  Algebra is fun,
> and it had been too long since I last looked at Herstein.  So does
> this mean that, in fact, there is no good way to define division on
> integers, without including the rationals?
right.

When the discussion came up, I was on the side of those who though 1/2
should be 1 - an int.

After thinking a bit about it, I believe that "/" should be the division we
know from the field of rationals (or reals).

Since there is no "field of ints", ints as operands to "/" should be treated
like flaots, and therefore the result should be 0.5

Of course there should be an extra operator like "div" for integer division,
which would return floor(a/b). "mod" should give you (a - floor(a/b)*b).

At least this are my thoughts on this issue. I have to agree that they might
no be very "pragmatic".

> I suspect we're giving the Pragmatic Programmers hives.
are we, andy?

greetings, Florian Pflug