From: Dennis Marsa (drm@xilinx.com)
Date: Fri Mar 01 2002 - 08:34:42 PST
Precedence: bulk
Paul Graham wrote:
>
> I think that the rule about exponentiation was intended to cover the case of
> a negative exponent. So:
>
> x ** -1
>
> will generally be a real number. The text:
>
> The result of the power operator shall be real if either operand is a
> real,integer,or signed.
>
> should be changed to read:
>
> The result of the power operator shall be real if either operand is
> real, or if the second operand is negative.
I like first part (result is real if either operand is real),
but not the second. The second operand could be a variable,
and at compilation time we would not necessarily know if it
is negative or not.
integer x, y;
x ** y; // real or integer?
Shouldn't the result type be determinable statically?
Dennis
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