On Dec 16, 4:55 am, "Fredrik Johansson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Dec 15, 2007 10:05 PM, Lie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Random ramble past here: > > Actually, my vision would be not only fractions, but also rooted > > number (square root, cube root, etc), it could be possible to > > implement a type where a number consist of a rooted number times a > > multiplier plus a variable [a + b * root(c, d)]. But I guess this > > would be extremely complex and it requires nesting, probably very slow > > if implementation isn't good. The advantage of using such is much > > faster operations, as long as str() is not called. This actually > > reflects my way of doing paper math, I save the lossy operations > > (float division, root, trigonometric function) until the very end of > > calculation (I'm not fundamentalist though, so compromise sometimes is > > done here and there). > > You're looking for a computer algebra system. Try > sympy:http://code.google.com/p/sympy/ > > Fredrik
Yeah, that's why I consider them too complex for being included as a core of a general programming language like Python. Nevertheless, fraction datatype _IS_ elementary enough to be included as core language feature. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
