Re: Perl oddities

I find the behaviour of int() odd: I want it to be like floor(), since then I can easily make ceil() and other useful functions for myself without loading the expensive POSIX module:

  sub ceil { -int(-shift) }
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I've never been able to see a good reason for the existing "truncate towards zero" behaviour.

Hugo

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Re^2: Perl oddities by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Mar 01, 2005 at 18:21 UTC
It seems pretty sensible to me to say that the integer portion of -3.5 is -3. It's still pretty easy to write ceil and floor: `sub ceil { my $n = shift; int($n) + ($n > int($n)); } sub floor { my $n = shift; int($n) - ($n < int($n)); }` [download] Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Perl oddities by merlyn (Sage) on Mar 01, 2005 at 18:24 UTC
There's no promise in the docs that less than and greater than return 1 and 0. Just "true" and "false". It could return 37 for true, and undef for false. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.	[reply]
Re^4: Perl oddities by TimToady (Parson) on Mar 01, 2005 at 19:02 UTC
We will try to nail those down a little better in Perl 6. Returning the null string for false was a premature optimization on my part, and a false economy (as it were), so the standard boolean operators will return 0 and 1 in Perl 6 so that when you print them out, they look like something rather than nothing. Also, since Perl 6 distinguishes boolean from numeric and string contexts, it can optimize away the actual production of a 0 or 1 value in many cases. That's not to say that we're ever going to require people to use 0 and 1 for boolean values. Perl 6 will be just like Perl 5 in letting you treat just about anything as a boolean value. So non-zero numbers are still true, as are strings that aren't null or `"0"`. And maybe we can fix the `"0"` problem too.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Perl oddities by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Mar 01, 2005 at 18:46 UTC
As someone who has just posted a couple of times about undocumented behavior, I will not protest too loudly about being called on this one. Still, it's a convention that has been relied on and seems unlikely to change. The obvious fix is: `sub ceil { my $n = shift; int($n) + ($n > int($n) ? 1 : 0); }` [download] Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.	[reply] [d/l]