---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bill Poser <billpos...@gmail.com> Date: Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 6:02 PM Subject: Re: ? Reasonable to propose stability policy on numeric type = decimal To: Michael Everson <ever...@evertype.com>
On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 4:25 PM, Michael Everson <ever...@evertype.com> wrote: > On 24 Jul 2010, at 23:00, Bill Poser wrote: > >> On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Michael Everson <ever...@evertype.com> >> wrote: >> >>> Digits can be scattered randomly about the code space and it wouldn't make >>> any difference. >> >> Having written a library for performing conversions between Unicode strings >> and numbers, I disagree. > > You can, but in principle it remains true. A claim for which you provide not the slightest argument and for which, as, I believe, a non-programmer, you have no experience or authority. As I said, it isn't a huge issue, but scattering the digits makes the programming a bit more complex and error-prone and the programs a little less efficient. To provide a simple example, if you want to check whether a character is a numeral in such-and-such a numeral system, it is simpler and less error prone, and many situations also more efficient at the machine level, to test something like: if (( c >= DIGIT0) && (c <= DIGIT9)) than to test whether c is one of ten scattered code points.
