[Python-Dev] Expert floats

Greg Ewing greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Wed Mar 31 22:16:01 EST 2004


Andrew Koenig <ark-mlist at att.net>:

> On the other hand, it is pragmatically more convenient when an
> implementation prints the values of floating-point literals with a small
> number of significant digits with the same number of significant digits with
> which they were entered.

But "significant digits" is a concept that exists only
in the mind of the user. How is the implementation to
know how many of the digits are significant, or how
many digits it was originally entered with?

And what about numbers that result from a calculation,
and weren't "entered" at all?

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+
University of Canterbury,	   | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a	  |
Christchurch, New Zealand	   | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc.  |
greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz	   +--------------------------------------+



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