Bug #52457 [Opn]: A natural number is any positive non-zero integer

Edit report at http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=52457&edit=1 ID: 52457 Updated by: degeberg@php.net Reported by: hm2k@php.net Summary: A natural number is any positive non-zero integer Status: Open Type: Bug Package: Documentation problem PHP Version: Irrelevant Block user comment: N New Comment: Why not just remove the reference to "natural numbers" and just say that it requires positive integers? This is completely unambiguous. That page doesn't otherwise use the term "natural numbers". Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2010-08-05 15:18:53] hm2k@php.net Agreed, there's something not quite right, I just couldn't put my finger on it. Cheers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2010-08-05 03:05:46] cataphract@php.net "non-zero positive integer" is the part that doesn't make sense. 0 is neither positive nor negative. It should read "a natural number is, for this purpose, any positive integer (0 is therefore not included)". ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2010-07-27 15:33:12] hm2k@php.net Description: ------------ As a user rightly pointed out a couple of years ago (http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.bcpowmod.php#73406), the statement is incorrectly written: "Note: Because this method uses the modulus operation, non-natural numbers may give unexpected results. A natural number is any positive non-zero integer. " Which is directly from the documentation, meanwhile it is else where defined as: "In mathematics, there are two conventions for the set of natural numbers: it is either the set of positive integers {1, 2, 3, ...} according to the traditional definition; or the set of non-negative integers {0, 1, 2, ...} according to a definition first appearing in the nineteenth century." @see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_number Perhaps it should read: "Note: This method uses the modulus operation, which may produce unexpected results if supplied with anything other than a non-zero positive integer." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=52457&edit=1