[Python-Dev] Cross-platform math functions?

Tim Peters tim.peters at gmail.com
Tue Sep 5 01:06:50 CEST 2006


[Andreas Raab]
> I'm curious if there is any interest in the Python community to achieve
> better cross-platform math behavior. A quick test[1] shows a
> non-surprising difference between the platform implementations.
> Question: Is there any interest in changing the behavior to produce
> identical results across platforms (for example by utilizing fdlibm
> [2])? Since I have need for a set of cross-platform math functions I'll
> probably start with a math-compatible fdlibm module (unless somebody has
> done that already ;-)

Package a Python wrapper and see how popular it becomes.  Some reasons
against trying to standardize on fdlibm were explained here:

    http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-July/290164.html

Bottom line is I suspect that when it comes to bit-for-bit
reproducibility, fewer people care about that x-platform than care
about it x-language on the box they use.  Nothing wrong with different
modules for people with different desires.


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