Re: Integers and Mathematical Correctness

[Adam Beneschan <adambeneschan@gmail.com>]

On Friday, September 26, 2014 2:07:32 AM UTC-7, vincent....@gmail.com wrote:

> 2. The very existence of the 
> 
>    function "/" (Left, Right : Integer) return Integer; 
> 
> prevents the implementation and the use of Rational types in Ada, which are otherwise very simple to implement using a record type, just like complex numbers. 

How does the existence of this operator prevent it?

I just tried this:

package Rational_Numbers is
    type Rational is private;
    function "/" (Numerator, Denominator : Integer) return Rational;
private
    ...
end Rational_Numbers;

with Rational_Numbers;
procedure Test is
    use type Rational_Numbers.Rational;
    R : Rational_Numbers.Rational;
begin
    R := 5 / 2;
end Test;

Which compiles fine and does what you'd expect.  If there is some other thing that you'd like to do with rational numbers that you can't because of the predefined "/", please elaborate.

                               -- Adam