Adam Olsen wrote:
On 1/17/06, Bob Ippolito bob@redivi.com wrote:
On Jan 17, 2006, at 3:38 PM, Adam Olsen wrote:
I dream of a day when str(3.25, base=2) == '11.01'. That is the number a float really represents. It would be so much easier to understand why floats behave the way they do if it were possible to print them in binary.
Actually if you wanted something that closely represents what a floating point number is then you would want to see this::
>>> str(3.25, base=2) '1.101e1' >>> str(0.25, base=2) '1.0e-10'Printing the bits without an exponent is nearly as misleading as printing them in decimal.
I disagree. The exponent is involved in rounding to fit in compact storage but once that is complete the value can be represented exactly without it.
Albeit with excessively long representations for the larger values one sometimes sees represented in float form.
Personally I wouldn't even be interested in seeing 1.3407807929942597e+154 written in fixed point form *in decimal*, let alone in binary where the representation, though unambiguous, would have over 500 bits, most of them zeros.
regards Steve