April 9, 2000
8:25 p.m.
[Christian]
Hmm, I hope I understood. Oh, wait a minute! What is the method? What is the correct value?
If I type
0.1 0.10000000000000001 0.10000000000000001 0.10000000000000001
There is only one value: The one which is in the machine. Would you think it is ok to get 0.1 back, when you actually *typed* 0.10000000000000001 ?
Yes, this is the kind of surprise I sketched with the "2-bit machine" example. It can get more surprising than the above (where, as you suspect, "shortest conversion" yields "0.1" for both -- which, btw, is why reading it back in to a float type with more precision loses accuracy needlessly, which in turn is why 754 True Believers dislike it). repetitively y'rs - tim