The future of math in Snowman templates?

[Abbe98]

Background / problem

Snowmans template system currently provides a series of math related functions like add, add1, sub, div, mul, mod, and rand. All of these only operate on whole numbers, if given a non whole number it will be cast to an integer before operated on.

Imagine the snippet div 2.9 3. Before 2.9 is operated on it's cast to 3, the result therefore becomes 0.

This limit developers options to work with floating values, a few have the option to do operations on floats directly in their SPARQL queries but that's not an option for all.

Suggestion

I'm leaning towards making all the math functions default to working with floating values, so that div 2.9 3 returns 0.966666666667.

If need be one would be able to reproduce the old behavior by doing something like div (int 2.9) 3, but it's still a breaking change that I think would have an impact on many projects.

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Thoughts or concerns regarding the proposed changes are very welcome!