Re: Re: gnuplot cvs source bug

[<ds...@ch...>]

> On Fri, 2005-09-23 at 17:24 -0400, ds...@ch... wrote:
> 
> > But yeah, int(...) of this and float(...) of that scatter about the scripts is nasty and unnecessary.
> 
> You say "scatter about the scripts" like there are lots of occasions
> that an integer result would be required. 

Scattered doesn't mean a lot, it means occassional occurrence here and there--rare to the point of easily overlooking.  (In principle no different than having decimal points scattered about.)

> This seems to be a matter of personal taste,

Not taste, but convenience.  I admit I don't use integer math in gnuplot right now, but I do work in a field where integer math is common, e.g., sample rates, filtering, etc.

What I'm saying is don't toss out the integer math behavior.  I could imagine someone using it...

> but I think being explicit
> like that is much more obvious than going with the presence/absence of
> a .0 after a numeric literal.

... but I agree that treating all numbers as floats is probably more common.

My vote would be to keep the integer mechanism with the option of casting everything to floats via "treat_all_numbers_as_floats" variable, which is on by default.

Dan