[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 10:04 AM, Sam Ruby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Decimal implemented as a library would be sufficient for a 3.1 >> release. The problem is an interoperable definition for what infix >> operators is required for completeness. Taking no other action, the >> default behavior for the result of a "+" operator given a Number and a >> library provided Decimal would be to convert both to string >> representations and concatenate the results. > > In other words, the same as the "+" operator given a Number and a > library provided Employee, Document, PopupWidget, ..., or any other > user defined type.
Having Decimal.parse(2) + 3 produce "23" is not what I would call "fail fast", as that is a term I would typically use for throwing an exception or the like. >> This was discussed at the last ECMA TC39 meeting in Oslo, and was >> found to be unusable and would create a backwards compatibility issue >> for Harmony. > > With respect, I wonder what these would be. It seems that the > fail-fast behavior in this case is useful for (as I pointed out) stuff > like helping establish Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. I understand that > such requirements are why we need decimal arithmetic in the first > place. At most, Sarbanes-Oxley might be an example of one source for requirements. >> ... spec'ing the operators would not be all that difficult. ... there >> are some usability concerns relating to mixed mode operations >> that we need to work through. > > It is precisely these concerns that cause me to wonder if there's a > foundational issue here. Are decimals indeed a different enough beast, > and the pitfalls subtle enough (even if they can be specified > completely), that mixed mode should simply not be supported (i.e., > made to fail-fast in some backwards compatible way)? I don't believe the concerns are that decimals are a "same enough" or a "different enough beast", but rather that "fail fast" is not the type of behavior one would expect from ES for numeric operations. And to be clear, this is less of a concern with arithmetic operators than with relational operators. It would not be wise for equality operators, in particular, to start throwing exceptions. > And if mixed mode is not supported, does that mean the library > approach is adequate? > > Ihab - Sam Ruby _______________________________________________ Es-discuss mailing list Es-discuss@mozilla.org https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
