sqrt(2) must go

[Don]

On 21.10.2011 09:53, Manu wrote:
> On 21 October 2011 09:00, Don <nospam at nospam.com
> <mailto:nospam at nospam.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 21.10.2011 05:24, Robert Jacques wrote:
>
>         On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:11:27 -0400, Don <nospam at nospam.com
>         <mailto:nospam at nospam.com>> wrote:
>         [snip]
>
>             I'd like to get to the situation where those overloads can
>             be added
>             without breaking peoples code. The draconian possibility is
>             to disallow
>             them in all cases: integer types never match floating point
>             function
>             parameters.
>             The second possibility is to introduce a tie-breaker rule:
>             when there's
>             an ambiguity, choose double.
>             And a third possibility is to only apply that tie-breaker
>             rule to
>             literals.
>             And the fourth possibility is to keep the language as it is
>             now, and
>             allow code to break when overloads get added.
>
>             The one I really, really don't want, is the situation we
>             have now:
>             #5: whenever an overload gets added, introduce a hack for that
>             function...
>
>
>         I agree that #5 and #4 not acceptable longer term solutions. I do
>         CUDA/GPU programming, so I live in a world of floats and ints. So
>         changing the rules does worries me, but mainly because most
>         people don't
>         use floats on a daily basis, which introduces bias into the
>         discussion.
>
>
>     Yeah, that's a valuable perspective.
>     sqrt(2) is "I don't care what the precision is".
>     What I get from you and Manu is:
>     if you're working in a float world, you want float to be the tiebreaker.
>     Otherwise, you want double (or possibly real!) to be the tiebreaker.
>
>     And therefore, the
>
>
>         Thinking it over, here are my suggestions, though I'm not sure
>         if 2a or
>         2b would be best:
>
>         1) Integer literals and expressions should use range propagation
>         to use
>         the thinnest loss-less conversion. If no loss-less conversion
>         exists,
>         then an error is raised. Choosing double as a default is always the
>         wrong choice for GPUs and most embedded systems.
>         2a) Lossy variable conversions are disallowed.
>         2b) Lossy variable conversions undergo bounds checking when
>         asserts are
>         turned on.
>
>
>     The spec says: "Integer values cannot be implicitly converted to
>     another type that cannot represent the integer bit pattern after
>     integral promotion."
>     Now although that was intended to only apply to integers, it reads
>     as if it should apply to floating point as well.
>
>
>         The idea behind 2b) would be:
>
>         int i = 1;
>         float f = i; // assert(true);
>         i = int.max;
>         f = i; // assert(false);
>
>
>     That would be catastrophically slow.
>
>     I wonder how painful disallowing lossy conversions would be.
>
>
> 1: Seems reasonable for literals; "Integer literals and expressions
> should use range propagation to use
> the thinnest loss-less conversion"... but can you clarify what you mean
> by 'expressions'? I assume we're talking strictly literal expressions?

Any expression. Just as right now, long converts to int only if the long 
expression is guaranteed to fit into 32 bits.
Of course, if it's a literal, this is very easy.

> 2b: Does runtime bounds checking actually addresses the question; which
> of an ambiguous function to choose?
> If I read you correctly, 2b suggests bounds checking the implicit cast
> for data loss at runtime, but which to choose? float/double/real? We'll
> still arguing that question even with this proposal taken into
> consideration... :/

It's an independent issue.

> Perhaps I missed something?
>
> Naturally all this complexity assumes we go with the tie-breaker
> approach, which I'm becoming more and more convinced is a bad plan...

No, it doesn't. As I said, this is independent. Except that it does mean 
that some existing int->float conversions would be disallowed.
EG,
float foo(int x)
{
     return x;
}
wouldn't compile, because x might not fit into a float without loss of 
accuracy.