What exactly is "exact" (was Clean Singleton Docstrings)

[Peter Otten]

Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

> Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com>:
>> you don't need an infinite amount of paper, except that they work with
>> binary rather than decimal, so people think "0.1 + 0.2 ought to be
>> exactly 0.3, why isn't it??", and blame floats.
> 
> Oh, if we only had eight fingers on our hand...

We already have one nibble and a carry bit, and it didn't help...

> 
> Scheme, though doesn't force the implementation to use binary. It could
> use trinary or sexagesimal for all Scheme cares. The application
> shouldn't care, either.
> 
> 
> Marko