PEP 240 scares me
Alex Martelli
aleaxit at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 27 14:08:10 EST 2001
"Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
news:15040.53203.949420.930912 at beluga.mojam.com...
>
> Alex> AFAIK -- 1.2 would be the rational 6/5
>
> Okay, dumb question time. Suppose the compiler sees the string "1.2" in
the
> input stream. How does it translate that into a rational number (6/5 or
> 12/10 or 24/20 or ...)? Does it simply move the decimal point over
> sufficiently and create the corresponding rational number that contains
the
> appropriate power-of-ten denominator?
Moshe will have to confirm his intent, but I'd be astonished if it
did anything but that.
> What about rationals that can't be
> represented correctly using decimal notation (e.g. how does one get from
> 0.3333 to 1/3, or is it simply approximated by 3333/10000?)
0.3333 is _exactly_ represented by 3333/10000; the approximation
would be that of this exact rational with the different one 1/3.
Alex
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