Raymond Hettinger wrote:
From the mists of Argentina, a Palidan set things right. The literal 1.1 became representable and throughout the land the monster was believed to have been slain.
I don't understand. Isn't the monster going to pop right back up again as soon as anyone does any arithmetic with the number? I don't see how you can regard what Decimal does as "schoolbook arithmetic" unless the teacher is reaching over your shoulder and blacking out any excess digits after everything you do. And if that's acceptable, I don't see how it helps significantly to have just the very first step -- turning the input into numbers -- be exempt from this behaviour. If anything, people are going to be even more confused. "But it can obviously cope with 1.1000000000000000001, so why does it give the wrong answer when I add something to it?" Greg