[Python-Dev] Expert floats (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Wed Mar 31 22:16:01 EST 2004

Andrew Koenig <ark-mlist at att.net>:

On the other hand, it is pragmatically more convenient when an implementation prints the values of floating-point literals with a small number of significant digits with the same number of significant digits with which they were entered.

But "significant digits" is a concept that exists only in the mind of the user. How is the implementation to know how many of the digits are significant, or how many digits it was originally entered with?

And what about numbers that result from a calculation, and weren't "entered" at all?

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+ University of Canterbury, | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a | Christchurch, New Zealand | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc. | greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz +--------------------------------------+

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