[swift-evolution] floating point numbers implicit conversion

[Ted F.A. van Gaalen]

Hello,

Appr. a year ago I suggested to allow implicit conversion between floating point number types,
that is between Float, CGFloat  Double..Float80 … 
(Note that CGFloat IS a Double on 64-bit systems btw),

E.g I am currently making things using SceneKit 3D, wich obviously involves a lot
of floating point arithmetic, using functions from several libraries where
some use Floats, others Double or CGFloat etc.. 
That wouldn't be so bad, were it not that all the work that I do contains
a lot of of unavoidable explicit Floating point conversions like so:

let ypos = CGFloat(1080.0 - (yGravity * yfactor))  // double in expression to CGFloat

camera1.reorientate (
                    SCNVector3(x: Float(motionGravityY *  -0.08),
                               y: Float(motionGravityX *  -0.1),
                               z: roll )             )

This is tedious and makes source less readable.

With implicit floating point number conversion It could be like this

var float1,float2,float3: Float
var double1,double2,double3: Double
var cgfloat1, cgfloat2, ccgfloat3 CGFloat 

float1 = cgfloat2 * double3 + float1   // implicit conversion should be allowed (whereby everything 
in the expression should be promoted to the highest precision var in the expression (Double here)  
which then would be type wise:   
Float = CGFloat(implicitly. promoted to Double) * Double) + Float  (imp. promoted to Double) 

Also, implicit conversion when passing function parameters would be very convenient as well e.g.

This function: 
       func someMath(p1: Float, p2: Float, result: Inout Float) {…}

could then be called without explicit conversion like so:

        someMath(p1: double1, p2: cgfloat1,  result: &double3)   

// yes, also on inout parameters. This is done 2 times during the call and when returning.
 

As I vaguely remember  there were objections to this implicit conversion of FP numbers,
because this was (as viewed back then) too complicated to implement?

Note that people that regularly work with floating point numbers are
well aware about having a precision loss when e.g.  when converting
from Double to Float, or indeed between other numerical types as well 
no problem.

For those not desiring such flexibility, there could be a new compiler option(s)
that disallows this freedom of implicit floating point number conversion.

or have at least (suppressible) compiler warnings about precision loss,
e.g when doing this: float = double.. 

?

Kind Regards from Speyer, Germany
TedvG









  



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