Re: Problem with scaled durations

[David Kastrup]

Oscar Dub <address@hidden> writes:

> Interesting, thanks David!
>
> I think we're agreed that this was a slightly synthetic scenario. In
> the project where I discovered the issue I've worked around the
> problem by limiting the scope of the possible note durations as you. I
> now using multiples of a very small base duration rather than the long
> nasty rationals – all's good on that front.
>
> From a user perspective, I thought it might be nice for the compiler
> to send out some kind of error or warning message. Currently there's
> no sign of anything wrong except the final output. Is this valid
> enough an issue to be worth a quick bug report?

Overflow in C++ Rational arithmetic would take effort to reliably and
would complicate the code base considerably.  At some point of time, the
Rational class will likely get replaced with Scheme rationals (which
have "arbitrary precision") and the problem will go away.

Now "arbitrary precision" is also limited, but it is more likely that
your program will grind to a halt by resource starvation (and you'll
rethink your approach) than that you are going to reach that point.  And
even if you do, Guile will throw an (albeit obscure) error.

-- 
David Kastrup