Re: Request: Integer Division
- Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jan 02, 2013
- 1463 views
This really should be in a Request-for-Feature ticket, but...
I offer to include integer division, for example:
integer Y = 3 integer Z = 2 integer X = Y \ Z
instead of
integer X = trunc(X/Z)
because it is more effective. First option is equivalent for
integer X = 0 while Y >= Z do X += 1 Y -= Z end while
Second option is equivalent for
integer Y = 3 integer Z = 2 atom YY = Y atom ZZ = Z atom XX = YY / ZZ integer X = trunc(XX)
As far as I know, integer addition and subtraction is much more effective than the division of floating point numbers.
I think the syntax is the most contriversal part here.
Adding a new builtin or machine func, like so:
integer X = integer_division(Y,Z)
which is equivalent to
integer X = 0 while Y >= Z do X += 1 Y -= Z end while
but implemented using integer division at the assembler level is pretty easy to do, and it's certainly a lot faster and more efficient than using intdiv.
I think however, changing the syntax such that
integer X = Y \ Z
does integer division, may break backwards compatibility and could be confusing, considering the way that the current and older versions of Euphoria handled this.
