Re: [q-lang-users] Exponentiation operator

[Rob H. <hub...@gm...>]

Albert Graef wrote:
> A related question is whether rational arithmetic should return an Int 
> instead of a Rational when the denominator of the result is 1. Rob, what 
> is your take on this? In your current implementation it will always 
> return a Rational, right?
>
> Albert
>
>   
Yes, currently a Rational is returned even if the value could be float.

All the functions return a "normalised" value. Thus a simple way to 
implement the other behaviour is to change "normalisation" to reduce to 
Int when possible. There's a chance that some of my algorithms will need 
to be tweaked afterwards, as sometimes I assume in some private 
functions that a value is in the form (rat N D). Thus perhaps there 
should be separate "normalisers" for producing intermediate values, and 
for returning values to a the public interface.

I think that the behaviour ought to follow the style of what you do with 
(^).

There are pros and cons with either approach. On the one hand, always 
having a Rational gives you certainty of type. On the other hand, having 
a simpler type returned may be an advantage, especially when that's an 
intermediate value.

Rob.