More int and float attributes

[Paddy]

bearophileHUGS at lycos.com wrote:
> Paddy:
> > Or do you mean the ability to choose between hardware supported float
> > s? e.g. float and double precision?
>
> No, I mean just having the ability to ask the float (his attribute)
> what are the max and min values it can represent, etc.
>
> stop = float.max
> ...
>
> I don't know any simple way to know that values now. And importing sys
> to know the max int looks stupid.
>
> maxi = int.max
> mini = int.min
> ...
>
> Such attributes can be given to the Decimal values too, if you want.
>
> Bye,
> bearophile
Hi  bearophille,
decimals have their context; maybe floats could have your read-only
'context' values made available somehow. I don't know if their is an
issue with making this (static) data available from all float
instances, so maybe it should go in sys.

Maybe people, (me included), don't pay enough attention to the
trade-offs inherent in floating point arithmatic. I was taught about
difference equations, and rounding errors. I regularly compute answers
in programs without regard to floating point precision because the
defaults chosen work for most of my cases, but if I needed to be more
precise then I too would need some of the info you suggest.

Question: do the scientific packages supported by Python supply this
data in a regular manner?

- Paddy.

P.S. My appologies to any professional 'counters of currencies' out
their who may have been offended by my earlier use of the term 'bean
counters' - You probably earn much more than me - don't call in my
loans - I have babes in arms to feed....  :-)