[boost] Re: Re: [rational] Announcing new maintainer -- callforfeaturerequests

From: Jonathan Turkanis (technews_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-03-31 00:03:58

Andras Erdei wrote:
> Peter Dimov wrote:
>
>> Since rounding is a subset of unspecified, it can only be worse if it
>> carries an unacceptable overhead when overflow does not occur. I
>> don't think that this is the case here.
>
> yes!
>
>> Exception on overflow is only better than rounding if no result is
>> better than an approximate result, that is, when the answer has to be
>> correct no matter what. This requirement is better served by
>> rational<unlimited> which does deliver a correct answer. I don't see
>> how rational<limited>+exception-on-overflow is better.
>
> after i failed to convince people that the current boost::rational is
> useless, i agreed to make an exception throwing version in the secret
> hope that it can be made the default, and as in practice it will
> always throw and never give
> a result, it will discourage people from using it

> what really makes this scary is that there is the very same rational
> proposal before the committee, and if it makes through we will have a
> standard that cannot be made to work for fixed precision (builtins)
> and cannot be implemented efficiently for unlimited precision
> (bigints)
>
>
> sorry, but feeling frustrated :O)
> andras

Hi Andras,

I'm sorry you feel frustrated, but I don't think it's warranted. IIRC, when you
raised the issues before, after a bit of discussion I essentially said that I
didn't have time to consider the matter fully, and would get to it later. Now
we're having a fuller discussion of the issues you raised, there seem to be more
participants than before, and no final decisions have been made. I'd say things
are going well.

Jonathan