Promoting to Complex

[Andrew Whitworth]

My thought on this is definitely "yes". If Parrot provides an
operation, it should produce the correct result over the largest
possible input range. We do allow users to override the default types
and many default behaviors, but for people who don't take that step we
should still provide the best possible default. We do offer a built-in
Complex PMC, so there's no extra overhead in producing the correct
results.

--Andrew Whitworth



On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
<paul at windfall.com> wrote:
> Folks,
> Should PMC functions with partial complex ranges promote their result to a
> Complex? For example, should sqrt(negative Float) produce a Complex? This
> issue does not pertain to native numbers, since we never promote them to
> PMCs.
> There is precedence for doing this. For example, Integer promotes to BigInt
> when necessary.
> ~~ Paul
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Windfall               Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
>       ----------------------------------------------------------
>    Software              978 371-2316
>                              www.windfall.com
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