On Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 11:18 AM Steven D'Aprano
On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 03:33:22PM -0400, Random832 wrote:
That is nonsense. "exactly representable" is a plain english phrase and has a clear meaning that only involves the actual data format, not the context.
Perhaps your understanding of plain English is radically different from mine, but I don't understand how that can be.
The actual data format has some humongeous limits (which may or may not be reachable in practice, due to memory constraints). It is obvious to me that "exactly representable" must take into account the current context:
- If it didn't, then the context precision would be meaningless; changing it wouldn't actually change the precision of calculations.
- Decimal(1)/3 is Decimal('0.3333333333333333333333333333') by default, a mere 28 digits, not MAX_PREC (999999999999999999) digits.
Neither 1/3 nor sqrt(2) can be *exactly represented* as a decimal fraction. It doesn't matter what the precision is set to, there is absolutely no way that they can be perfectly represented (other than symbolically or as a fraction or something, which the decimal module doesn't do). OTOH, 2**X * 5**Y * Z can be exactly represented, for any integers X, Y, and Z; but the precision required might exceed the module's limits. I don't really understand your complaint here. The plain English interpretation of "exactly representable" is, within margin of error, a perfectly representable concept. (The "margin of error" here is that, barring infinite RAM, there will always be *some* limit to the precision stored.)
(To be honest, I was surprised to learn that the context precision is ignored when creating a Decimal from a string. I still find it a bit odd that if I set the precision to 3, I can still create a Decimal with twelve digits.)
The context is used for arithmetic, not construction. All that being said, though, I still don't think the Decimal module needs an option to go for infinite precision even if it can be truly exact. The potential for an unexpected performance hit is too high, and the temptation to set this flag would also be very high. (Imagine the Stack Overflow answers: "yeah, the decimal module is inaccurate by default, just set this and it becomes accurate".) ChrisA