python decimal library dmath.py v0.3 released

[Mark H. Harris]

On Monday, March 3, 2014 2:03:19 PM UTC-6, Mark H. Harris wrote:
> On Monday, March 3, 2014 11:23:13 AM UTC-6, Wolfgang Maier wrote:

Wolfgang,  answer is not so much, in fact, not at all. 
But it is an interesting question for me; where I am 
continuing to learn the limits of Decimal, and the 
decimal context. I don't need rounding for integer 
multiplication, of course. 

I am interested in arbitrary limits, like emax, for instance. 
The doc is a little ambiguous. Is emax the max exponent, 
and if so, is 999999999 the limit, or is that the default 
context value which might be bumped up? 
If so, why have a limit on the emin & emax values?
I'm playing with it. Shouldn't a Decimal value 
be able to continue to grow to the limit of memory if we 
wanted to be silly about it? According to the doc 'clamping'
occurs if the exponent falls outside the range of emin &  
emax (what is overflow vs clamping ?) if the significant digits
are allowed to grow and grow? Well, the doc then states that
overflow occurs if we blow past the emax exponent value?
What is the difference between overflow and clamping? Am
I able to set emin & emax arbitrarily high or low? 

I have discovered just by playing with integer multiplication 
that those BIGNUMS don't seem to have a physical limit. Of 
course there isn't a decimal to keep track of, and they can 
just grow and grow; wouldn't want to make a Decimal from 
one of those, other than it is interesting to me as I'm trying
to understand Decimal floating point.  

marcus