Python fails on math

D'Arcy J.M. Cain darcy at druid.net
Thu Feb 24 09:17:56 EST 2011


On Thu, 24 Feb 2011 04:56:46 -0800
Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
> >> The IEEE 754 compliant FPU on most machines today, though, has an 80-bit
> >> internal representation.  If you do a sequence of operations that retain
> >> all the intermediate results in the FPU registers, you get 16 more bits
> >> of precision than if you store after each operation.
> > 
> > That's a big if though. Which languages support such a thing? C doubles 
> > are 64 bit, same as Python.
> 
> Assembly!  :)

Really?  Why would you need that level of precision just to gather all
the students into the auditorium?

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.



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