[Numpy-discussion] IEEE 754-2008 decimal floating point support

[Michael Gilbert]

On Wed, 8 Sep 2010 09:43:56 -0600, Charles R Harris wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Michael Gilbert <michael.s.gilbert at gmail.com
> > wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > Are there any plans to add support for decimal floating point
> > arithmetic, as defined in the 2008 revision of the IEEE 754 standard
> > [0], in numpy?
> >
> >
> Not at the moment. There is currently no hardware or C support and adding
> new types to numpy isn't trivial. You can get some limited Decimal
> functionality by using python classes and object arrays, for instance the
> Decimal class in the python decimal module, but the performance isn't great.
> 
> What is your particular interest in decimal support?

Primarily avoiding catastrophic cancellation when subtracting
large values.  I was planning to use the decimal class, but was
curious whether support for the IEEE standard was coming any time soon.

Thanks,
Mike