From the perspective of some that writes a lot of computational code: On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:25 AM Mark Dickinson <dickinsm@gmail.com> wrote:
- Should we require the presence of NaNs in order for CPython to build? - Should we require IEEE 754 floating-point for CPython-the-implementation?
Yes, and yes, together, as Mark suggests - Should we require IEEE 754 floating-point for Python-the-language?
I would say no, but it should be recommended -- see Victor's example of Micro Python -- though does anyone have an authority over that? IIUC, Micro Python already has a few differences -- but is anyone saying they shouldn't call it Python? Though, with a quick perusal of teh docs, micro Python does seem to support NaN and Inf, at least -- not sure about the rest of 754. While we're at it are 64 bit floats required for either cPython or Python the language? IIUC, the main platform that this was an issue for, for computationally heavy code, was Cray -- but it seems they're 754 compatible now, yes? Thanks for doing this, -CHB -- Christopher Barker, PhD (Chris) Python Language Consulting - Teaching - Scientific Software Development - Desktop GUI and Web Development - wxPython, numpy, scipy, Cython