implicit type coercion

Hi Chris,

putting messages in Object is never intelligent, at best hackish, and at worse bad style (because of littering and of such un-controlled side effects).

The purpose of my changes was to distinguish comparison from arithmetic:

- for performing arithmetic, exact + inexact lead to an inexact, so it's OK to convert asFloat.

- for performing comparison exact < inexact, you must not convert to inexact or you wll change the relation.

I don't remember what drove me to such high level in hierarchy, but I think that I had to cope with many objects pretending to perform arithmetic (Collection, String, ...).

Or were the original messages already at high level?

We should feel free to revisit anyway!

I don't like implicit conversions when there is no well established bijection.

The example from Tim was excellent: should 1+$1 be 2 or 50?

Why is it different from 1+'1'?

Should we convert Boolean asInteger for cross language (in)convenience?

Should we have true = '1' then?

For me, this is opening a can of worms: a principle of most astonishment.

All those wanting to follow the astonishment path should first lesson once more to:

 https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

In the same vein, I hate the null pattern. nil is not false, #() and '' are not false, because empty is not false, 'false' is not true either (though not empty), etc...

These extensions are obscuring the intentions, are equivoque, and are delaying bug finding when un-intentional.

For example, in Matlab relations < and > are defined on complex: you hardly never gonna need that...

except maybe when sorting the eigenvalues of a matrix- and even in this case, you don't want to always use the same ordering,

There is no natural ordering preserving a<b & (c<d) ==> (a+c)<(c+d), so why choose one rather than the other?

The net result is that it is delaying bug finding when you have an unexpected complex result, the program continues and does something, it's just that you don't know exactly what, you lost control...

Le mar. 16 avr. 2019 à 03:41, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> a écrit :

Kudos Fabio for noticing the non-symmetry in type coercion between
Strings and Characters.  I was doing a little more research and
noticed we have all these adapt'ing methods on *Object* (!!).

Object>>#adaptToFloat:andCompare:
Object>>#adaptToFloat:andSend:
Object>>#adaptToFraction:andCompare:
Object>>#adaptToFraction:andSend:
Object>>#adaptToInteger:andCompare:
Object>>#adaptToInteger:andSend:
Object>>#adaptToScaledDecimal:andCompare:

Browse origin showed methods added in 2006 by Kernel-nice.398 (version
notes below).  The explanation given there and in all three Mantis
reports relates to coercions between Integers and Floats.

So, it doesn't appear that these were intended to encourage automatic
coercion of ANY object to the numbers domain for interoperation with
numbers, but its presence on Object maybe was the common superclass
for the implementation.

I submitted an alternative version to the Inbox which proposes
symmetry between Strings and Characters to be that they both require
explicit coercion.

Whether to do automatic coercion in the language feels like a weighty
decision.  My gut is telling me its better to be conservative in doing
auto coercing, but I'm sure Nicolas' and others' can better articulate
an the most intelligent path forward.

 - Chris

_____________
Name: Kernel-nice.398
Author: nice
Time: 13 February 2010, 4:31:00.389 am
UUID: f1525362-d01a-214c-94fe-2bb3a5fffa89
Ancestors: Kernel-nice.397

Fix
http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=3360
http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=3374
http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=6601

hash and = are now reconciled for numbers.
= is now transitive for numbers.

WARNING: now, tests like (1/10 = 0.1) will answer false.
This is expected, and more than expected, this is wanted.
Float are inexact and testing for strict equality is not a clever thing to do.
All this has been longly debated at
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.pharo.devel/10642
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.sapphire.devel/10223/focus=10228

Please, read carefully this thread to make an opinion before raising your voice.
It can break code eventually,  so I'm all ears to real case, and
willing to help fixing. But please, real examples, not theoretical
(after 8 month change in Pharo, I'm not aware of further complaints).

Le mar. 16 avr. 2019 à 10:50, Nicolas Cellier <[hidden email]> a écrit :

Hi Chris,

putting messages in Object is never intelligent, at best hackish, and at worse bad style (because of littering and of such un-controlled side effects).

The purpose of my changes was to distinguish comparison from arithmetic:

- for performing arithmetic, exact + inexact lead to an inexact, so it's OK to convert asFloat.

- for performing comparison exact < inexact, you must not convert to inexact or you wll change the relation.

I don't remember what drove me to such high level in hierarchy, but I think that I had to cope with many objects pretending to perform arithmetic (Collection, String, ...).

Or were the original messages already at high level?

Ater inspection, it's not me who decided...

All the adaptToXXX:andSend: were already at Object level since 1998!

We should feel free to revisit anyway!

I don't like implicit conversions when there is no well established bijection.

The example from Tim was excellent: should 1+$1 be 2 or 50?

Why is it different from 1+'1'?

Should we convert Boolean asInteger for cross language (in)convenience?

Should we have true = '1' then?

For me, this is opening a can of worms: a principle of most astonishment.

All those wanting to follow the astonishment path should first lesson once more to:

 https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

In the same vein, I hate the null pattern. nil is not false, #() and '' are not false, because empty is not false, 'false' is not true either (though not empty), etc...

These extensions are obscuring the intentions, are equivoque, and are delaying bug finding when un-intentional.

For example, in Matlab relations < and > are defined on complex: you hardly never gonna need that...

except maybe when sorting the eigenvalues of a matrix- and even in this case, you don't want to always use the same ordering,

There is no natural ordering preserving a<b & (c<d) ==> (a+c)<(c+d), so why choose one rather than the other?

The net result is that it is delaying bug finding when you have an unexpected complex result, the program continues and does something, it's just that you don't know exactly what, you lost control...

Le mar. 16 avr. 2019 à 03:41, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> a écrit :

Kudos Fabio for noticing the non-symmetry in type coercion between
Strings and Characters.  I was doing a little more research and
noticed we have all these adapt'ing methods on *Object* (!!).

Object>>#adaptToFloat:andCompare:
Object>>#adaptToFloat:andSend:
Object>>#adaptToFraction:andCompare:
Object>>#adaptToFraction:andSend:
Object>>#adaptToInteger:andCompare:
Object>>#adaptToInteger:andSend:
Object>>#adaptToScaledDecimal:andCompare:

Browse origin showed methods added in 2006 by Kernel-nice.398 (version
notes below).  The explanation given there and in all three Mantis
reports relates to coercions between Integers and Floats.

So, it doesn't appear that these were intended to encourage automatic
coercion of ANY object to the numbers domain for interoperation with
numbers, but its presence on Object maybe was the common superclass
for the implementation.

I submitted an alternative version to the Inbox which proposes
symmetry between Strings and Characters to be that they both require
explicit coercion.

Whether to do automatic coercion in the language feels like a weighty
decision.  My gut is telling me its better to be conservative in doing
auto coercing, but I'm sure Nicolas' and others' can better articulate
an the most intelligent path forward.

 - Chris

_____________
Name: Kernel-nice.398
Author: nice
Time: 13 February 2010, 4:31:00.389 am
UUID: f1525362-d01a-214c-94fe-2bb3a5fffa89
Ancestors: Kernel-nice.397

Fix
http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=3360
http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=3374
http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=6601

hash and = are now reconciled for numbers.
= is now transitive for numbers.

WARNING: now, tests like (1/10 = 0.1) will answer false.
This is expected, and more than expected, this is wanted.
Float are inexact and testing for strict equality is not a clever thing to do.
All this has been longly debated at
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.pharo.devel/10642
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.sapphire.devel/10223/focus=10228

Please, read carefully this thread to make an opinion before raising your voice.
It can break code eventually,  so I'm all ears to real case, and
willing to help fixing. But please, real examples, not theoretical
(after 8 month change in Pharo, I'm not aware of further complaints).