Enhancing Elixir with Enumerable Protocol and Sigils for Intervals

Author Andrés Alejos discusses the creation of a small Elixir library, Exterval, designed to handle real-valued intervals within the language's scope, using the Enumerable Protocol. This was motivated by limitations in the existing Elixir Range, which works with discrete integer steps and lacks a more aesthetic and mathematically intuitive representation. To address this, Exterval uses sigils to express intervals while implementing functionalities such as membership checks using the 'in' keyword and supporting iteration through the 'step' parameter. Design decisions involved regex-based parsing and emphasis was placed on clear naming conventions and interval definitions within Elixir's extensible framework. Future plans for Exterval may include set operations, although the current focus is on maintaining a lightweight library.