| From: Michael Sperber <xxxxxx@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>
 | Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 21:44:10 -1000
 |
 | Aubrey Jaffer <xxxxxx@alum.mit.edu> writes:
 |
 | > What is the rationale for mandating exact rationals?
 |
 | This (from the SRFI document):
 |
 | > Under R5RS, it is hard to write programs whose arithmetic is
 | > portable across the above categories, and it is unnecessarily
 | > difficult even to write programs whose arithmetic is portable
 | > between different implementations in the same category.
 |
 | > The portability problems can most easily be solved by requiring
 | > all implementations to support the full numeric tower.

Easy for who?

Implementing exact non-integers for SCM and Guile would take a lot of
work.

"Most easily", and also less confusing for users, would be to remove
exact non-integers from the language.