I wholeheartedly agree. We have used tolerance tests for floats since 1962 
because equality tests are meaningless. = for floats should give error.

Cheers
--Trygve

At 06:01 29.03.2006,  Andres wrote:
>Hello ncellier,
>
>Tuesday, March 28, 2006, 7:25:46 AM, you wrote:
>
>nic> [number hashing is broken]
>nic> What is your opinion ?
>
>IMHO... sometimes it may be convenient to have 2 = 2.0, but since they
>represent different intentions, I would not expect that to happen.
>Why should a perfectly specified integer be equal to, possibly, the
>result of carrying calculations without infinite precision?  What
>would it mean if theGreatDoublePrecisionResult = 2?  Wouldn't it be
>more interesting (and precise) to ask laysWithin: epsilon from: 2?
>
>In other words, comparing constants makes it look much simpler than
>what it really is.  Reading something like anInteger = 2.0 would be,
>from my point of view, highly questionable because it is an assertion
>that an approximation has an *exact* value.  Nonsense.
>
> >From a more pragmatic point of view, there is also the issue of 2 =
>2.0, but things like
>
>   (1 bitShift: 1000) - 1
>
>cannot be equal to any floating point number supported by common
>hardware.  Thus, exploiting anInteger = aFloat is intention obscuring
>by definition since it may or may not work depending on the integer.
>Again, highly questionable.
>
>In short: floating point numbers *may* be equal to integers, but the
>behavior of #= cannot be determined a priori.  Since the behavior of
>#= does not imply a relationship of equivalence, the behavior of #hash
>is inconsequential.
>
>Adding integers and floats to a set gets messed up.  So we have two
>options... a) don't do it because it is intention obscuring... or b)
>make integers never be equal to floating point numbers.
>
>Same deal with fractions and the like.
>
>--
>Best regards,
>  Andres                            mailto:sqrmax at optonline.net


-- 

Trygve Reenskaug      mailto: trygver at ifi.uio.no
Morgedalsvn. 5A       http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver
N-0378 Oslo           Tel: (+47) 22 49 57 27
Norway