[Haskell-cafe] [Agda] Defining subtraction for naturals

[Luke Palmer]

If you are implementing lazy naturals, I wonder if defining 0 - 1 to
be infinity makes mathematical sense.  It's like arithmetic mod
infinity....

Luke

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 12:35 PM, wren ng thornton <wren at freegeek.org> wrote:
> Another question on particulars. When dealing with natural numbers, we run
> into the problem of defining subtraction. There are a few reasonable
> definitions:
>
> (1) If the result would drop below zero then throw an overflow error;
>
> (2) Use saturating subtraction, i.e. if the result would drop below zero
> then return zero;
>
> (3) Use type hackery to disallow performing subtraction when the result
> would drop below zero, e.g. by requiring a proof that the left argument is
> not less than the right.
>
> Dependently typed languages tend to use the second definition because it
> gives a pure total function (unlike the first) and because it's less
> obnoxious to use than the third. In Haskell the third would be even more
> obnoxious.
>
> So my question is, mathematically speaking, is there any reason to prefer
> the second option over the first or third? Purity aside, I mean; do the
> natural numbers with saturating subtraction form any interesting
> mathematical object, or is it just what we're stuck with?
>
>
> In a similar vein. Given a finite set (e.g., the natural numbers with some
> finite upper bound) and assuming we've already decided not to use modular
> arithmetic, is there any mathematical reason to prefer saturating addition
> and/or multiplication instead of throwing an overflow error?
>
> --
> Live well,
> ~wren
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