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bjonnh
12/05/2020, 7:03 PMWhy is there no pow function for integers?
One explanation I see (on SO) is that it would quickly overflow an Integer anyway. But I wonder if that's the reason behind the design choice (of Java it seems)
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adamratzman
12/05/2020, 7:18 PMMy theory is that there’s no Int.NaN, but there is a Float.NaN and Double.NaN, and I don’t think the stdlib designers would consider a pow function “correct” without accounting for the cases where NaN should be returned
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Nir
12/05/2020, 7:18 PMWhy does NaN have anything to do with it?
I don't follow that theory at all
Exponentiation is better defined than division
And you can divide integers even with no way to account for dividing by zero
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adamratzman
12/05/2020, 7:20 PMn
Nir
12/05/2020, 7:20 PMAn integer to the power of an integer is well defined for all values
You only get NaN for NaN inputs or infinite
Which integers don't support, so they can't be inputs
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adamratzman
12/05/2020, 7:21 PMThey can be infinite, but not nan
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Nir
12/05/2020, 7:21 PMIntegers can't be infinite
Unless this is some crazy feature of JVM integers that nobody else uses
Maybe a more compelling reason is Int.power(Int) returns a non Integer for any negative second argument
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adamratzman
12/05/2020, 7:23 PMOh wow, I mistakenly thought there was an Int.POSITIVE/NEGATIVE_INFINITY
disregard what I said then
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Nir
12/05/2020, 7:23 PMSo perhaps the result needs to be floating point regardless
But it would still be useful for convenience IMHO
Yeah floating point has infinite because it's part of IEEE and had native support
(NaN too)
With Int you'd need to emulate it all with branching and perf is bad
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Dominaezzz
12/05/2020, 8:48 PMn
Nir
12/05/2020, 9:00 PMThis isn't the same as the question on this thread, just FYI
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