Problem coercing 7/3 to double

Workaround:

println( Math.sin( (7/3).doubleValue() ) )

This is by design. Division produces a Double result if either operand is either Float or Double and a BigDecimal result otherwise. See http://groovy.codehaus.org/math.html. This is to prevent unexpected results which occur with binary floating point types in arithmetic (e.g. .1F + 1.1F does not equal 1.2F)

The "workaround" is the correct syntax.

However, the error message should be improved to indicate the method signature.

The attached patch improves the message.

In the example above, with the patch applied, the message is:
No such method: sin(java.math.BigDecimal) for class: java.lang.Math with arguments: [2.3333333333]

Okay, so the "right" way to do it would be:

println( Math.sin( 7.0 / 3.0 ) )

Thanks.

No. This may work with the current code, but numeric literals with a decimal point are supposed to be BigDecimal by default. This code is included in the parser rework which will be committed soon. See issue 256. Also, the updated wiki is in the patch for issue 256.

So, if you want to do something like that, you need to use the numeric literal suffixes, like:

println( Math.sin( 7.0D / 3.0D ) )

Actually, if either 7.0 or 3.0 is suffixed with D, the result will be a Double.

As discussed elsewhere, we should do auto-coercion of BigDecimal to Double, with an exception thrown when the BigDecimal is too big. This seems as good a place as any for the work.

Ok. I'll start looking into it.

Here is the patch to permit "safe" BigDecimal to Double coercion as discussed in issue 256, for example, Math.sin(7.3). I'd like to get this into CVS before we release the next beta (beta 5?) if possible. Some other coersion issues will be covered in issue GROOVY-275.

bump now that the cvs mailing list seems to be working. Please apply the patches when you get a chance.

Applied patch