[Python-ideas] Python3.3 Decimal Library Released

[David Mertz]

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 3:01 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

> For the record, int doesn't have a sqrt() method while Decimal has, so
> if you wanna take the exact square root of a large integer, you'd better
> convert it to a Decimal.
>

Well, actually, if you want to take the square root of a large integer,
most times you'll need an irrational number as a value.  Unfortunately,
neither floats, decimals, nor fractions are able to do that (nor any finite
representation that is numeric; you can only use symbolic ones).

On the other hand, now that you mention it, a floor_sqrt() function that
operated quickly on ints would be nice to have.  But that's a different
thread.


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