Decorum is a Rust library that provides total ordering, equivalence, hashing, constraints, error handling, and more for IEEE 754 floating-point representations. Decorum requires Rust 1.65.0 or higher and, except for specific features, does not require the std nor alloc libraries.

Basic Usage

Panic when a NaN is encountered:

use decorum::NotNan;

let x = NotNan::<f64>::assert(0.0);
let y = NotNan::<f64>::assert(0.0);
let z = x / y; // Panics.

Hash totally ordered IEEE 754 floating-point representations:

use decorum::real::UnaryRealFunction;
use decorum::Real;
use std::collections::HashMap;

let key = Real::<f64>::PI;
let mut xs: HashMap<_, _> = [(key, "pi")].into_iter().collect();

Configure the behavior of an IEEE 754 floating-point representation:

pub mod real {
    use decorum::constraint::IsReal;
    use decorum::divergence::{AsResult, OrError};
    use decorum::proxy::{Constrained, OutputOf};

    // A 64-bit floating point type that must represent a real number and returns
    // `Result`s from fallible operations.
    pub type Real = Constrained<f64, IsReal<OrError<AsResult>>>;
    pub type Result = OutputOf<Real>;
}

use real::Real;

pub fn f(x: Real) -> real::Result { ... }

let x = Real::assert(0.0);
let y = Real::assert(0.0);
let z = (x / y)?;

Proxy Types

The primary API of Decorum is its Constrained types, which transparently wrap primitive IEEE 754 floating-point types and configure their behavior. Constrained types support many numeric features and operations and integrate with the num-traits crate and others when Cargo features are enabled. Depending on its configuration, a proxy can be used as a drop-in replacement for primitive floating-point types.

The following Constrained behaviors can be configured:

1. the allowed subset of IEEE 754 floating-point values
2. the output type of fallibe operations (that may produce non-member values w.r.t. a subset)
3. what happens when an error occurs (i.e., return an error value or panic)

Note that the output type of fallible operations and the error behavior are independent. A Constrained type may return a Result and yet panic if an error occurs, which can be useful for conditional compilation and builds wherein behavior changes but types do not. The behavior of a Constrained type is configured using two mechanisms: constraints and divergence.

use decorum::constraint::IsReal;
use decorum::divergence::OrPanic;
use decorum::proxy::Constrained;

// `Real` must represent a real number and otherwise panics.
pub type Real = Constrained<f64, IsReal<OrPanic>>;

Constraints specify a subset of floating-point values that a proxy may represent. IEEE 754 floating-point values are divided into three such subsets:

Subset	Example Member
real numbers	3.1459
infinities	+INF
not-a-numbers	NaN

Constraints can be used to strictly represent real numbers, extended reals, or complete but totally ordered IEEE 754 types (i.e., no constraints). Available constraints are summarized below:

Constraint	Members	Fallible
IsFloat	real numbers, infinities, not-a-numbers	no
IsExtendedReal	real numbers, infinities	yes
IsReal	real numbers	yes

IsFloat supports all IEEE 754 floating-point values and so applies no constraint at all. As such, it has no fallible operations w.r.t. the constraint and does not accept a divergence.

Many operations on members of these subsets may produce values from other subsets that are illegal w.r.t. constraints, such as the addition of two real numbers resulting in +INF. A divergence type determines both the behavior when an illegal value is encountered as well as the output type of such fallible operations.

Divergence	OK	Error	Default Output Kind
OrPanic	continue	panic	AsSelf
OrError	continue	break	AsExpression

In the above table, continue refers to returning a non-error value while break refers to returning an error value. If an illegal value is encountered, then the OrPanic divergence panics while the OrError divergence constructs a value that encodes the error. The output type of fallible operations is determined by an output kind:

Output Kind	Type	Continue	Break
AsSelf	Self	self
AsOption	Option<Self>	Some(self)	None
AsResult	Result<Self, E>	Ok(self)	Err(error)
AsExpression	Expression<Self, E>	Defined(self)	Undefined(error)

In the table above, Self refers to a Constrained type and E refers to the associated error type of its constraint. Note that only the OrPanic divergence supports AsSelf and can output the same type as its input type for fallible operations (just like primitive IEEE 754 floating-point types).

With the sole exception of AsSelf, the output type of fallible operations is extrinsic: fallible operations produce types that differ from their input types. The Expression type, which somewhat resembles the standard Result type, improves the ergonomics of error handling by implementing mathematical traits such that it can be used directly in expressions and defer error checking.

use decorum::constraint::IsReal;
use decorum::divergence::{AsExpression, OrError};
use decorum::proxy::{Constrained, OutputOf};
use decorum::real::UnaryRealFunction;
use decorum::try_expression;

pub type Real = Constrained<f64, IsReal<OrError<AsExpression>>>;
pub type Expr = OutputOf<Real>;

pub fn f(x: Real, y: Real) -> Expr {
    let sum = x + y;
    sum * g(x)
}

pub fn g(x: Real) -> Expr {
    x + Real::ONE
}

let x: Real = try_expression! { f(Real::E, -Real::ONE) };
// ...

When using a nightly Rust toolchain with the unstable Cargo feature enabled, Expression also supports the (at time of writing) unstable Try trait and try operator ?.

// As above, but using the try operator `?`.
let x: Real = f(Real::E, -Real::ONE)?;

Constrained types support numerous constructions and conversions depending on configuration, including conversions for references, slices, subsets, supersets, and more. Conversions are provided via inherent functions and implementations of the standard From and TryFrom traits. The following inherent functions are supported by all Constrained types, though some more bespoke constructions are available for specific configurations.

Method	Input	Output	Error
new	primitive	proxy	break
assert	primitive	proxy	panic
try_new	primitive	proxy	Result::Err
try_from_{mut_}slice	primitive	proxy	Result::Err
into_inner	proxy	primitive
from_subset	proxy	proxy
into_superset	proxy	proxy

The following type definitions provide common proxy configurations. Each type implements different traits that describe the supported encoding and elements of IEEE 754 floating-point based on its constraints.

Type Definition	Sized Aliases	Trait Implementations	Illegal Values
Total		BaseEncoding + InfinityEncoding + NanEncoding
ExtendedReal	E32, E64	BaseEncoding + InfinityEncoding	NaN
Real	R32, R64	BaseEncoding	NaN, -INF, +INF

Relations and Total Ordering

Decorum provides the following non-standard total ordering for IEEE 754 floating-point representations:

-INF < ... < 0 < ... < +INF < NaN

IEEE 754 floating-point encoding has multiple representations of zero (-0 and +0) and NaN. This ordering and equivalence relations consider all zero and NaN representations equal, which differs from the standard partial ordering.

Some proxy types disallow unordered NaN values and therefore support a total ordering based on the ordered subset of non-NaN floating-point values. Constrained types that use IsFloat (such as the Total type definition) support NaN but use the total ordering described above to implement the standard Eq, Hash, and Ord traits.

The following traits can be used to compare and hash primitive floating-point values (including slices) using this non-standard relation.

Floating-Point Trait	Standard Trait
CanonicalEq	Eq
CanonicalHash	Hash
CanonicalOrd	Ord

use decorum::cmp::CanonicalEq;

let x = 0.0f64 / 0.0f64; // `NaN`.
let y = f64::INFINITY + f64::NEG_INFINITY; // `NaN`.
assert!(x.eq_canonical(&y));

Decorum also provides the IntrinsicOrd trait and the min_or_undefined and max_or_undefined functions. These pairwise comparisons can be used with partially ordered types that have an intrinsic representation for undefined, such as Option (None) and IEEE 754 floating-point representations (NaN). For floating-point representations, this provides an ergonomic method for comparison that naturally propogates NaNs just like floating-point operations do (unlike f64::max, etc.).

use decorum::cmp;
use decorum::real::{Endofunction, RealFunction, UnaryRealFunction};

pub fn f<T>(x: T, y: T) -> T
where
    T: Endofunction + RealFunction,
{
    // If the comparison is undefined, then `min` is assigned some
    // representation of undefined. For floating-point types, `NaN` represents
    // undefined and cannot be compared, so `min` is `NaN` if `x` or `y` is
    // `NaN`.
    let min = cmp::min_or_undefined(x, y);
    min * T::PI
}

Mathematical Traits

The real module provides various traits that describe real numbers and constructions via IEEE 754 floating-point types. These traits model functions and operations on real numbers and specify a codomain for functions where the output is not mathematically confined to the reals or a floating-point exception may yield a non-real approximation or error. For example, the logarithm of zero is undefined and the sum of two very large reals results in an infinity in IEEE 754. For proxy types, the codomain is the same as the branch type of its divergence (see above).

Real number and IEEE 754 encoding traits can both be used for generic programming. The following code demonstrates a function that accepts types that support floating-point infinities and real functions.

use decorum::real::{Endofunction, RealFunction};
use decorum::InfinityEncoding;

fn f<T>(x: T, y: T) -> T
where
    T: Endofunction + InfinityEncoding + RealFunction,
{
    let z = x / y;
    if z.is_infinite() {
        x + y
    }
    else {
        z + y
    }
}

Cargo Features

Decorum supports the following feature flags.

Feature	Default	Description
approx	yes	Implements traits from approx for Constrained types.
serde	yes	Implements traits from serde for Constrained types.
std	yes	Integrates the std library and enables dependent features.
unstable	no	Enables features that require an unstable compiler.