[Haskell-cafe] Mystery of an Eq instance

[Albert Y. C. Lai]

On 13-09-20 07:47 AM, damodar kulkarni wrote:
> *Main> sqrt (10.0) ==3.1622776601683795
> True
[...]
> *Main> sqrt (10.0) ==3.16227766016837956435443343
> True

This is not even specific to Haskell. Every language that provides 
floating point and floating point equality does this.

(To date, P(provides floating point equality | provides floating point) 
seems to be still 1.)

In the case of Haskell, where you may have a choice:

Do you want floating point > < ?

If you say yes, then you have two problems.

1. At present, Haskell puts > < under Ord, and Ord under Eq. You must 
accept Eq to get Ord. If you reject this, you're asking the whole 
community to re-arrange that class hierarchy just for a few types.

2. With or without your approval, one can still defy you and define:

     eq x y = not_corner_case x && not_corner_case y &&
              not (x<y) && not (x>y)

See, == can be derived from > < .