Speaking as a mathamatician, and replacing "float" with "real number": We really like like to pretend that the integers are a subset of the real numbers. As su

Speaking as a mathamatician, and replacing "float" with "real number": We really like like to pretend that the integers are a subset of the real numbers. As such, we really like to pretend that the function pow : real X int -> real is a restriction of the function pow : real X real -> real. Speaking as a programmer, I really expect the effect of casting between numeric types is only precision. If pow(0f,0) != pow (0f, 0f), then you break both of these assumptions.