Support for the Ruby 2.1 series ended on March 31 2017. See here for details.
When mathn is required Rational is changed to simplify the use of Rational operations.
Normal behaviour:
Rational.new!(1,3) ** 2 # => Rational(1, 9) (1 / 3) ** 2 # => 0
require 'mathn' behaviour:
(1 / 3) ** 2 # => 1/9
Exponentiate by other
(1/3) ** 2 # => 1/9
# File mathn.rb, line 138 def ** (other) if other.kind_of?(Rational) other2 = other if self < 0 return Complex(self, 0.0) ** other elsif other == 0 return Rational(1,1) elsif self == 0 return Rational(0,1) elsif self == 1 return Rational(1,1) end npd = numerator.prime_division dpd = denominator.prime_division if other < 0 other = -other npd, dpd = dpd, npd end for elm in npd elm[1] = elm[1] * other if !elm[1].kind_of?(Integer) and elm[1].denominator != 1 return Float(self) ** other2 end elm[1] = elm[1].to_i end for elm in dpd elm[1] = elm[1] * other if !elm[1].kind_of?(Integer) and elm[1].denominator != 1 return Float(self) ** other2 end elm[1] = elm[1].to_i end num = Integer.from_prime_division(npd) den = Integer.from_prime_division(dpd) Rational(num,den) elsif other.kind_of?(Integer) if other > 0 num = numerator ** other den = denominator ** other elsif other < 0 num = denominator ** -other den = numerator ** -other elsif other == 0 num = 1 den = 1 end Rational(num, den) elsif other.kind_of?(Float) Float(self) ** other else x , y = other.coerce(self) x ** y end end