Why isn't Python king of the hill?

[Grant Edwards]

On Sat, 2 Jun 2001 21:28:45 +0000 (UTC), E. Mark Ping <emarkp at CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

>>>Checking the difference of the values will yield another large
>>>number, and a method like "IsCloseTo" will incorrectly fail.
>>
>>How can it fail?  Either A is within X% of B or it isn't.  What's the
>>problem?
>
>But your algorithm didn't specify %, rather you said:
>
>  fabs((1.0 + 2.0) - 3.0) < [a small number] 
>
>If it were percentage, you'd be adding a division operation too.
>That's getting to be a large amount of overhead.

I did say that choosing the value of [a small number] was left
as an exercies for the reader.  In some cases it must be an
absolute value, in other cases relative to the values being
compared -- obviously it depends on the system requirements.

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