prec / precision asymmetry

[saschatimme]

This annoys me on a purely aesthetic level:

a = Arb(2; prec = 128)
b = Arb(prec = 2 * precision(a))

This should either be both prec or both precision. I know there is precision in Base but I think nobody writes generic code using precision anyways.

[Joel-Dahne]

That's true! Maybe there's not many people using precision in base now, but I really like that they have it and wouldn't want to move away from it. One solution could be to allow both prec and precision as keyword arguments? Not sure if there is a good way to do that.

From Julia 1.5 there is also some reason to want them to be different. The you could do something like

prec = 64
for i in 1:N
    Arb(2; prec)
    # Computations...
    prec *= 2
end

If they where called the same thing you would overwrite the precision method with the precision variable.