Added more documentation on how mixed-mode arithmetic should be implemented. I

also noticed and fixed a bug in Rational's forward operators (they were
claiming all instances of numbers.Rational instead of just the concrete types).

1 files changed, 141 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/library/numbers.rst b/Doc/library/numbers.rst
index 505a8af..6ee8f27 100644
--- a/Doc/library/numbers.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/numbers.rst
@@ -99,3 +99,144 @@ The numeric tower
    3-argument form of :func:`pow`, and the bit-string operations: ``<<``,
    ``>>``, ``&``, ``^``, ``|``, ``~``. Provides defaults for :func:`float`,
    :attr:`Rational.numerator`, and :attr:`Rational.denominator`.
+
+
+Notes for type implementors
+---------------------------
+
+Implementors should be careful to make equal numbers equal and hash
+them to the same values. This may be subtle if there are two different
+extensions of the real numbers. For example, :class:`rational.Rational`
+implements :func:`hash` as follows::
+
+    def __hash__(self):
+        if self.denominator == 1:
+            # Get integers right.
+            return hash(self.numerator)
+        # Expensive check, but definitely correct.
+        if self == float(self):
+            return hash(float(self))
+        else:
+            # Use tuple's hash to avoid a high collision rate on
+            # simple fractions.
+            return hash((self.numerator, self.denominator))
+
+
+Adding More Numeric ABCs
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+There are, of course, more possible ABCs for numbers, and this would
+be a poor hierarchy if it precluded the possibility of adding
+those. You can add ``MyFoo`` between :class:`Complex` and
+:class:`Real` with::
+
+    class MyFoo(Complex): ...
+    MyFoo.register(Real)
+
+
+Implementing the arithmetic operations
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+We want to implement the arithmetic operations so that mixed-mode
+operations either call an implementation whose author knew about the
+types of both arguments, or convert both to the nearest built in type
+and do the operation there. For subtypes of :class:`Integral`, this
+means that :meth:`__add__` and :meth:`__radd__` should be defined as::
+
+    class MyIntegral(Integral):
+
+        def __add__(self, other):
+            if isinstance(other, MyIntegral):
+                return do_my_adding_stuff(self, other)
+            elif isinstance(other, OtherTypeIKnowAbout):
+                return do_my_other_adding_stuff(self, other)
+            else:
+                return NotImplemented
+
+        def __radd__(self, other):
+            if isinstance(other, MyIntegral):
+                return do_my_adding_stuff(other, self)
+            elif isinstance(other, OtherTypeIKnowAbout):
+                return do_my_other_adding_stuff(other, self)
+            elif isinstance(other, Integral):
+                return int(other) + int(self)
+            elif isinstance(other, Real):
+                return float(other) + float(self)
+            elif isinstance(other, Complex):
+                return complex(other) + complex(self)
+            else:
+                return NotImplemented
+
+
+There are 5 different cases for a mixed-type operation on subclasses
+of :class:`Complex`. I'll refer to all of the above code that doesn't
+refer to ``MyIntegral`` and ``OtherTypeIKnowAbout`` as
+"boilerplate". ``a`` will be an instance of ``A``, which is a subtype
+of :class:`Complex` (``a : A <: Complex``), and ``b : B <:
+Complex``. I'll consider ``a + b``:
+
+    1. If ``A`` defines an :meth:`__add__` which accepts ``b``, all is
+       well.
+    2. If ``A`` falls back to the boilerplate code, and it were to
+       return a value from :meth:`__add__`, we'd miss the possibility
+       that ``B`` defines a more intelligent :meth:`__radd__`, so the
+       boilerplate should return :const:`NotImplemented` from
+       :meth:`__add__`. (Or ``A`` may not implement :meth:`__add__` at
+       all.)
+    3. Then ``B``'s :meth:`__radd__` gets a chance. If it accepts
+       ``a``, all is well.
+    4. If it falls back to the boilerplate, there are no more possible
+       methods to try, so this is where the default implementation
+       should live.
+    5. If ``B <: A``, Python tries ``B.__radd__`` before
+       ``A.__add__``. This is ok, because it was implemented with
+       knowledge of ``A``, so it can handle those instances before
+       delegating to :class:`Complex`.
+
+If ``A<:Complex`` and ``B<:Real`` without sharing any other knowledge,
+then the appropriate shared operation is the one involving the built
+in :class:`complex`, and both :meth:`__radd__` s land there, so ``a+b
+== b+a``.
+
+Because most of the operations on any given type will be very similar,
+it can be useful to define a helper function which generates the
+forward and reverse instances of any given operator. For example,
+:class:`rational.Rational` uses::
+
+    def _operator_fallbacks(monomorphic_operator, fallback_operator):
+        def forward(a, b):
+            if isinstance(b, (int, long, Rational)):
+                return monomorphic_operator(a, b)
+            elif isinstance(b, float):
+                return fallback_operator(float(a), b)
+            elif isinstance(b, complex):
+                return fallback_operator(complex(a), b)
+            else:
+                return NotImplemented
+        forward.__name__ = '__' + fallback_operator.__name__ + '__'
+        forward.__doc__ = monomorphic_operator.__doc__
+
+        def reverse(b, a):
+            if isinstance(a, RationalAbc):
+                # Includes ints.
+                return monomorphic_operator(a, b)
+            elif isinstance(a, numbers.Real):
+                return fallback_operator(float(a), float(b))
+            elif isinstance(a, numbers.Complex):
+                return fallback_operator(complex(a), complex(b))
+            else:
+                return NotImplemented
+        reverse.__name__ = '__r' + fallback_operator.__name__ + '__'
+        reverse.__doc__ = monomorphic_operator.__doc__
+
+        return forward, reverse
+
+    def _add(a, b):
+        """a + b"""
+        return Rational(a.numerator * b.denominator +
+                        b.numerator * a.denominator,
+                        a.denominator * b.denominator)
+
+    __add__, __radd__ = _operator_fallbacks(_add, operator.add)
+
+    # ...
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