(= 4 4.0)

[Chris Hanson <cph@martigny.ai.mit.edu>]

   Date: Fri, 20 May 94 12:22:06 -0400
   From: Aubrey Jaffer <jaffer@martigny.ai.mit.edu>

   Can a conforming R4RS implementation have exact integers and inexact
   numbers, but no inexact integers?  Stated another way, can a
   conforming R4RS implementation return #f from (= 4 4.0) ?

   Some other implications are:
    INTEGER? would return #f for all inexacts.
    QUOTIENT, REMAINDER, MODULO, GCD, LCM, ODD?, and EVEN? would take
   only exact arguments.
    ZERO? would return #t only for exact 0 argument.

   The only fly I have found in the ointment is in the description of
   FLOOR, CEILING, TRUNCATE, and ROUND where it says that what is
   returned is an integer and must have the same exactness as the
   argument.

This is what I interpret you to be saying:

    I am building an implementation with exact integers and inexact
    rationals implemented as floating-point numbers.  Although
    floating-point numbers have representations for integers, I want to
    pretend that these numbers are not integers so I don't have to
    implement the integer operations on them.

While there are some weak arguments that this is inconsistent with the
letter of the report, the real problem is that it is inconsistent with
the intent.  It's easy to support inexact integers, and it is useful
to do so; why not just do it?