Continued fraction/Arithmetic/Construct from rational number: Difference between revisions
Continued fraction/Arithmetic/Construct from rational number (view source)
Revision as of 21:23, 17 February 2023
, 1 year ago→{{header|ATS}}
m (→{{header|ATS}}) |
|||
Line 293:
=={{header|ATS}}==
I found the reference to "lazy evaluation" misleading, for it implies a special feature of a programming language. Haskell, for example, evaluates lists "lazily".
What one is--I am certain--supposed to write is means for generating an arbitrary number of terms of a continued fraction, one term after another. It happens that, for a rational number, eventually all further terms are known to be swamped by an infinity, and so need not be computed. The finite terms ''could'' be returned as a finite-length list. However, this will not be so when irrational numbers enter the picture. Therefore one needs a way to generate ''an indefinite number'' of terms. But this is something that requires no "lazy" features of a language. It could be done easily in standard C! The resulting code might, indeed, evaluate terms "lazily", but no special language features are required.
| |||