improve documentation for Integer bits(); negative numbers have "negative bits"

[dandrake]

On sage-devel I expressed my unease that negative integers have "negative bits". Strictly speaking, there is some inconsistency here, but the behavior is reasonable -- though it warrants some improved documentation.

Attached patch adds documentation for bits() to explain this.

Component: documentation

Keywords: bits integers

Author: Dan Drake

Reviewer: David Roe

Merged: sage-5.9.beta2

Issue created by migration from https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/14322

[dandrake]

Attachment: bits-doc.patch.gz

[dandrake]

comment:1

One unrelated (ahem) bit: I added something to the documentation for denominator, which seems strange for integers -- so we might as well say that it just returns 1 for everything.

[roed314]

comment:3

Looks good. Adding similar documentation to digits might be nice, but not necessary.

[roed314]

Reviewer: David Roe

[dandrake]

comment:4

Replying to @roed314:

Looks good. Adding similar documentation to digits might be nice, but not necessary.

There's an example in the digits documentation which shows the same kind of thing, so I thought I'd leave it for now.

Thanks for the quick review!

[jdemeyer]

Merged: sage-5.9.beta2