IEEE 754
William Tanksley
wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net
Mon Jul 24 20:51:50 EDT 2000
On 24 Jul 2000 23:09:30 GMT, Edward Jason Riedy wrote:
>And John W. Baxter writes:
> - You mean I may someday be able to put aside my answers to the "why
> - doesn't 2/10 print as 0.2 as we all know it should?" sorts of questions?
I'm not sure whether you mean that 2/10.0 isn't exactly 0.2, or whether
2/10 is 0.
>Way off-topic: Besides, not all numbers are natural for base-10.
>One example is pi. It strongly appears that the only natural base
>for pi is 16 (pi may be base-16 normal and not base-10 normal). Not
>proven yet, but looking likely. See
>http://www.nersc.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/bcrandom.ps for some neat
>pi results.
Could you clarify that? pi is not merely a repeating rational, like 1/3
(in decimal) and 1/5 (in binary); it's trancendental.
>Back on topic: Python's answer is even more painful to explain:
>> bash-2.03$ python -c 'print 2/10'
>> 0
I suspect that's what he was talking about. I couldn't tell either.
>Jason
--
-William "Billy" Tanksley
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