OpenEuphoria

Re: Help Please with numbers

• Posted by Jason Gade <jaygade at yahoo.com> Aug 02, 2005
• 618 views

cklester wrote:
> 
> Jason Gade wrote:
> > 
> > I had thought about this case. I think that the programmer would just have
> > to be clear
> > in what he or she wants.  sum(1) makes as much sense as sum("123").
> > 
> > sum("123", 0) should work correctly. sum("123") would produce 150 because it
> > is ambiguous.
> > 
> > I still wonder whether it would be a useful feature. How often is implicit
> > conversion
> > from string to number needed?
> 
> You could just provide the base functionality of summing only integers/atoms
> in a sequence, and if the user wanted more they could wrap it themselves.
> 
> sumi() -- sum a list of integers
> suma() -- sum a list of atoms
> sum() -- sum a list of atoms and/or integers
> 
> -=ck
> "Programming in a state of EUPHORIA."
> <a
> href="http://www.cklester.com/euphoria/">http://www.cklester.com/euphoria/</a>
> 

For me, atoms and integers should be the same and should be the default case. If
adding a sum() function that took strings as input, it would be the one with a
different name because it is the exceptional case.

One of my favorite features of Euphoria is its value-based semantics. A large
set of numbers can be represented by atoms. Every value in Euphoria is either an
atom or a sequence, therefore a number or a list of numbers.

It is up to the programmer to interpret them.

=====================================
Too many freaks, not enough circuses.

j.