A string doesn't equal itself

[Richard Gaskin]

Bill Marriott wrote:

> What about
> 
> put "3.141592653589793238461" is "3.141592653589793238462"
> 
> Guess what Rev says? (True.) Longstanding behavior in xTalk, going back to 
> HyperCard days.

You won't find much HyperCard worship here.  Sure, I liked it and used 
it, but I've found many things in that app that I would consider design 
errors and would count this among them.

Those two numbers are simply not equal.  To report that they are is an 
error.

That the cause of an error may be understandable doesn't mean that an 
error isn't an error.  Knowing why a leaf is green doesn't make it blue.

If the program cannot handle numbers of a certain precision, falsely 
pretending to do so seems less helpful than letting the user know it 
can't handle what it's being asked to do.

How would this example be handled by Mark Waddingham's proposed change?

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
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  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com