[Tutor] How does the interpreter determine how many decimal places to display for a float?

Roel Schroeven roel at roelschroeven.net
Sun May 16 12:00:27 EDT 2021


boB Stepp schreef op 15/05/2021 om 20:45:
> How did you ever suspect to look here?  "dtoa" = ?  Decimal to ASCII?

Double to ASCII, I'm guessing. C has two floating point types: float and 
double. Float has 32 bits, double has twice as many, 64 (at least on the 
platforms I'm familiar with; I don't know if that is universal). C's 
double corresponds to Python's float.

'd' for double is also used in C stdlib functions like strtod, and dtoa 
is named analog to itoa (int to ascii).

This style of short cryptic function names has its roots in early C/Unix 
habits, on computers with very limited memory and slow I/O over teletypes.

-- 
"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a
friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger."
         -- Franklin P. Jones

Roel Schroeven



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