[Python-Dev] Expert floats
Dennis Allison
allison at sumeru.stanford.EDU
Tue Mar 30 14:54:16 EST 2004
Did I miss the issue here?
Floating point represetnations are a problem because for some decimal
representations coverting the decimal form to binary and then back to
decimal does not (necessarily) return the same value. There's a large
literature on this problem and known solutions. (See, for example Guy
Steele's paper on printing floating point.)
On Tue, 30 Mar 2004, Dan Sugalski wrote:
> At 2:40 PM -0500 3/30/04, Tim Peters wrote:
> >[Josiah Carlson]
> > > That is, Python uses the 8-byte FP, not the (arguably worthless) 4-bit
> >> FP.
> >
> >I believe all Python platforms use *some* flavor of 8-byte float.
>
> Don't be too sure. I've seen the VMS version getting thumped
> lately--someone may well be using X floats there. (which are 16 byte
> floats)
> --
> Dan
>
> --------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
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