[GROOVY-256] Numeric literals: default BigDecimal for decimals, support suffixes

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.0-beta-4
• Fix Version/s: 1.0-beta-5
• Component/s: lexer, parser
• Environment: All
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Brian Larson
• Created: 10/Mar/04 23:11
• Updated: 05/Dec/04 04:04
• Resolved: 07/Apr/04 16:24

Description

This issue is from the recent groovy-dev list discussion concering the use of BigDecimal as the default numeric type for literals with a decimal point. Also, numeric literal suffixes should be supported to specify the type.

In the discussion, James Strachan said:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

• BigDecimal is the default type for any floating point number
  literals. For non-decimals we can choose the best size (Integer, Long,
  BigInteger based on the length of the number)

• folks can use B (big decimal) postfix to be explict or use D (double)
  or F (float) for more explicit control.

• to call typesafe methods of lower type (double, float) then you have
  to either use the doubleValue() or floatValue() methods or cast.

foo(float p)

{ ... }

x = 1.234
foo( (float) x )
foo( x.floatValue() )

unless

x = 1.234F
foo
------------------------------------------------------------------

Concerning:
>For non-decimals we can choose the best size (Integer, Long,
>BigInteger based on the length of the number)

Should we automatically choose the size or use suffixes (or both)?
B BigInteger (also means BigDecimal for literals with a dot)
I Integer
L Long

Issue Links

• depends upon: GROOVY-251 Lexer does not recognize .1 as a numeric literal
• is depended upon by: GROOVY-271 Groovy does not support floating point constants with exponents
• is depended upon by: GROOVY-274 Negate (-) does not work for types other than Integer, Double
• is depended upon by: GROOVY-275 Allows assignment of a value to a numeric type which is too large for it to hold
• is depended upon by: GROOVY-339 Problem coercing 7/3 to double
• is depended upon by: GROOVY-273 ClassGenration for numeric literal types other than Double and Integer
• is depended upon by: GROOVY-281 Improve error message when a matching constructor cannot be found at runtime
• is duplicated by: GROOVY-270 should Groovy allow constants of the form 1L?