[swift-evolution] Proposal: Remove % operator for floating-point types

[Kevin Ballard]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015, at 03:04 PM, Chris Lattner via swift-evolution wrote:
>
>> On Dec 18, 2015, at 3:03 PM, Stephen Canon <scanon at apple.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On Dec 18, 2015, at 5:57 PM, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Dec 18, 2015, at 1:12 PM, Stephen Canon via swift-evolution <swift-
>>> evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>>>> Hi everybody —
>>>>
>>>> I’d like to propose removing the “%” operator for floating-point
>>>> types.
>>>
>>> I support removing this - it is actively harmful for a surprising
>>> operation like this to have such short and inviting syntax.  As
>>> asked downthread, have you given any thought into whether a Decimal
>>> type would support this operation?
>>
>> The same concerns apply to decimal.  It makes sense to have the
>> operation (for both binary and decimal floating-point) as
>> “Type.remainder(a,b)” or a free function like "remainder(a, b)”, but
>> I would prefer not to use the operator “%” for it because it behaves
>> very differently from integer %, and in ways that are not at all
>> obvious to most users.
>
> Great, I’d prefer decimal and the float types to have a consistent
> interface where possible.  +1 from me on the proposal.

Agreed. +1 from me too. The `10.0 % 0.1` behavior is sufficiently
surprising that I think that justifies removal by itself.

I'm also in favor of adding mod and remainder as instance methods of the
floating point types, e.g. `10.0.mod(0.1)` (as opposed to static methods
or free functions).

-Kevin Ballard
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