Subject: Re: handling small numbers

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 18:49:50 +0200

> Paul Sephton (Tue 09.0500-14:22):

> Would it not be more sensible to give the programmer the choice as to 
> whether he wants to use the exception mechanism to find out what the 
> reason was that the goal failed?  Perhaps under some circumstances, a 
> general failure is quite acceptible, whereas sometimes one needs to know 
> the precise nature of the failure.

couldn't the matter be settled by providing a "bigint" package in the
distribution?  everybody knows about the different qualities of native
floats and ints.  when i'm to make design decisions involving numbers, i
choose integers whenever possible, because integer arithmetic is well
defined, with no strings attached (except, maybe, for strange mod/3, where
you have to ask about signs...).  when i have to use floats, i make a few
checks as to what has to be considered (required precision, range,
rounding).  i'd be happy using a bigint package or one for rational numbers.
can't we swi-prolog folks just use the dec-10 .pl's?

other than that i vote for exceptions, because i trust my programs to
follow their design rules once they are debugged...  ha!

-- 
clemens                            ([email-masked], pgp key available)