Type weirdness in division of array by scalar

[martinholters]

Doing

eltype(Vector{Number}([1, 2, 3]) + 1)
eltype(Vector{Number}([1, 2, 3]) - 1)
eltype(Vector{Number}([1, 2, 3]) * 1)
eltype(Vector{Number}([1, 2, 3]) / 1)

I would expect the result to be Number in all four cases. Indeed, this has been the case prior to dc12cc6 aka 0.4.0-dev+3331. Now however, only the first three yield Number, while the last one - division - gives ANY. Is there a good reason for this inconsistency or is this a bug?

[martinholters]

Taking a closer look at dc12cc6, why are :./ and :.\ removed from base/array.jl:783 ? (The corresponding code has in the meantime moved to base/arraymath.jl.) There is a quite extensive list of binary operators (even including div!), so why should normal division be excluded?

[nalimilan]

CC @timholy

[JeffBezanson]

@timholy Do you remember what the motivation was here?

[timholy]

Sorry I didn't notice this earlier.

It looked to me like that case should have been handled by lines 732-735 in that diff, but you're right that the mechanism is different. Now that we use promote_op, we could probably get rid of that whole section of code.