Re: Questions about srfi-77 Generic Arithmetic William D Clinger 19 Feb 2006 13:59 UTC

> Well, since then I've had more experience with your sense of humor,
> which I find a bit quirky; on rereading the post (I don't seem to
> have kept the e-mail) I couldn't really tell if you were joking then.

Quirky is a nice way to put it.  Thank you!

> I don't think you're easily confused; and my point is that if
> remainder versus modulo was confusing in 1996 for someone who
> implements Scheme, I think the new operators are going to be very
> confusing for people who use scheme.

I think you have convinced me.  I know I am convinced of the
following:

1.  SRFI 77's alleged rationale for div+mod, div, and mod
attacks a straw man when it claims that "even on integers
they are better suited than quotient and remainder to
implement modular reduction."  They should be compared
instead to quotient and modulo.

2.  When modulo is substituted for remainder in that claim,
the modified claim has no foundation in SRFI 77 or in the
cited paper.

It seems to me that the right thing to do is to redefine div,
mod, and div+mod to make them the generalizations of quotient,
modulo, and quotient+modulo (not quotient+remainder) to the
rationals.  I also think we should flush quotient+remainder,
replacing it with quotient+modulo.

Will