Loïc Grenié on Sun, 28 Sep 2014 16:49:43 +0200 |
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Re: [PATCH] enable basic arithmetic with infinity |
2014-09-28 9:36 GMT+02:00 Jeroen Demeyer <jdemeyer@cage.ugent.be>: > Hi Karim, > > On 2014-09-27 15:44, Karim Belabas wrote: >> >> Unfortunately, I made the mistake of allowing valuation(0) a long time >> ago (circa 1995). > > Now that you are breaking backwards compatibility anyway, then this would be > a good time to reconsider that decision. > > Consider the following two "extreme" cases: > (A) valuation(0,p) is not allowed in any case and always raises an error. > (B) valuation(0,p) is allowed and using it in mathematical operations (like > 2*valuation(0,p)) works. Even though there is no formal vote, I vote for (B), then (A), then actual situation. I've tried to implement infinity arithmetic as well, some time ago, and I came to the conclusion that it is actually tricky, so (A) may be the best solution after all (even though (B) is my prefered one). Loïc