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Bug #2121

closed

mathn/rational destroys Fixnum#/, Fixnum#quo and Bignum#/, Bignum#quo

Added by headius (Charles Nutter) over 14 years ago. Updated over 9 years ago.

Status:
Closed
Target version:
-
ruby -v:
Any 1.8.6 or higher
Backport:
[ruby-core:25644]

Description

=begin
I've known this for a while, but only now realized this is actually a terrible bug.

The mathn library replaces Fixnum#/ and Bignum#/ causing them to return a different value. When the result of a division is not an integral value, the default versions will return 0. I can think of many algorithms that would use this expectation, and most other languages will not upconvert integral numeric types to floating-point or fractional types without explicit consent by the programmer.

When requiring 'mathn', Fixnum#/ and Bignum#/ are replaced with versions that return a fractional value ('quo') causing a core math operator to return not just a different type, but a different value.

No core library should be allowed to modify the return value of core numeric operators, or else those operators are worthless; you can't rely on them to return a specific value ever since someone else could require 'mathn' or 'rational'.

Note also that 'rational' destroys Fixnum#quo and Bignum#quo. This is also a bug that should be fixed, though it is less dangerous because they're not commonly-used operators.

The following code should not fail; Fixnum#/ should never return a value of a different magnitude based on which libraries are loaded:

{{{
require 'test/unit'

class TestFixnumMath < Test::Unit::TestCase

0 to ensure it runs first, for illustration purposes

def test_0_without_mathn
assert_equal 0, 1/3
end

def test_with_mathn
require 'mathn'
assert_equal 0, 1/3
end
end
}}}

But it does fail:

{{{
~/projects/jruby ➔ ruby test_fixnum_math.rb
Loaded suite test_fixnum_math
Started
.F
Finished in 0.016003 seconds.

  1. Failure:
    test_with_mathn(TestFixnumMath) [test_fixnum_math.rb:11]:
    <0> expected but was
    <1/3>.

2 tests, 2 assertions, 1 failures, 0 errors
}}}
=end


Related issues 1 (0 open1 closed)

Related to Ruby master - Feature #10169: It might be better to make Mathn class deprecatedClosedhsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)Actions
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