code not true?

[Michal Wallace (sabren)]

On Sun, 23 Apr 2000, David Goodger wrote:

> > Why is this the case? I mean.. I understand why decimals are hard to
> > show in binary... But why can't we use variably long strings, or
> > something? Is it just a speed issue?
> 
> Try writing 1/3 in decimal. How many digits do you need to represent it
> *exactly*? Same issue for 0.07 in binary floating point.

Hmm... I see your point.. I'm going to go out on a limb here, though..
wouldn't "0.1" be a simple string representation of that number in
base 3? We could make it: "3:0.1" or something to show which base its
in..

If python is going to have radix methods for numbers, then it would seem
to me that you could store floats in whichever system made it easiest to
express them.

I guess there's still numbers like pi out there... But even so, if
you're only talking about adding and subtracting and multiplying
floating points..  Hmm... Well, okay... I give up. :)

Cheers,

- Michal
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