String to Float, without introducing errors
dn
PythonList at DancesWithMice.info
Sun Dec 18 16:45:34 EST 2022
On 18/12/2022 10.55, Stefan Ram wrote:
> Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards at gmail.com> writes:
>> Yes, fixed point (or decimal) is a better fit for what he's doing. but
>> I suspect that floating point would be a better fit for the problem
>> he's trying to solve.
>
> I'd like to predict that within the next ten posts in this
> thread someone will mention "What Every Computer Scientist
> Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic".
Thank you for doing-so.
More specific: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/floatingpoint.html
Perhaps in the rush to 'answer', the joke is on 'us' - that we might
first need to more carefully-understand the OP's use-case, requirements,
and constraints?
The joke sours when remembering that this 'mystery' generates frequent
questions 'here' (and on other Python fora) - not as many as 'why don't
I see a pretty-GUI when I fire-up Python on MS-Windows?' but it is a
more sophisticated realisation and deserves a detailed response (such as
the thought-provoking illustration-code appearing today).
Is it a consequence of Python lowering 'the barrier to entry'? Good
thing? Bad thing?
(we first started noticing this sort of issue in our (non-Python) MOOCs,
several pre-COVID years ago: when we first started, the trainee was
typically recent post-grad; whereas today we enrol folk with a much
wider range of ages and backgrounds. It is likely that more dev.work has
gone into 'the bottom end', than into new/higher sophistications - even
given IT's rate-of-change!)
--
--
Regards,
=dn
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