[Python-Dev] Expert floats

[Dennis Allison]

Did I miss the issue here?  

Floating point represetnations are a problem because for some decimal
representations coverting the decimal form to binary and then back to
decimal does not (necessarily) return the same value.  There's a large
literature on this problem and known solutions.  (See, for example Guy
Steele's paper on printing floating point.)

On Tue, 30 Mar 2004, Dan Sugalski wrote:

> At 2:40 PM -0500 3/30/04, Tim Peters wrote:
> >[Josiah Carlson]
> >  > That is, Python uses the 8-byte FP, not the (arguably worthless) 4-bit
> >>  FP.
> >
> >I believe all Python platforms use *some* flavor of 8-byte float.
> 
> Don't be too sure. I've seen the VMS version getting thumped 
> lately--someone may well be using X floats there. (which are 16 byte 
> floats)
> -- 
>                                          Dan
> 
> --------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
> Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
> dan at sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
>                                        teddy bears get drunk
> 
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