floating point in 2.0

Kurt B. Kaiser kbk at shore.net
Wed Jun 6 20:25:13 EDT 2001


Alex Martelli wrote:

> I did most of my thesis work in APL (then had to redo it in Fortran
> and Assembler, but that's another story) and used APL2 heavily
> later (in IBM Research), and I recall those darned globals that
> broke my routines when used in somebody else's workspaces as
> the worst blights on an otherwise interesting language (if you
> had the right terminal/keyboard/typewriter ball/&c:-).
> 
> Alex

balls, you say? I remember being hunched over an IBM 5100 (the first
PC?)
for months on end coding AR filters on semiconductors. The screen was 
about 3 inches by 4 inches, about 4 inches off the desk. But it really
worked, was built like a tank, and was only about $15,000, as I
recall...
and APL worked like a charm for that application.  

Just don't let anyone mess with your globals =)

But you know, an explict FUZZ brings the float comparison problem
out in the open and promotes documentation. Now, if you are going
to use floats as keys in a dict, heaven help you!

Regards, KBK



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