[Python-Dev] New operations in Decimal (original) (raw)

Nick Maclaren nmm1 at cus.cam.ac.uk
Tue May 1 22:32:50 CEST 2007


Facundo Batista <facundo at taniquetil.com.ar> wrote:

> Am I losing my marbles, or is this a proposal to add the logical > operations to FLOATING-POINT? Sort of. This is a proposal to keep compliant with the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification, as we promised. http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/

Or, more precisely:

http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/damisc.html

All right. Neither you nor I have lost our marbles, but the authors of that assuredly did. It's totally insane. And implementing it for a software emulation of that specification built on top of a twos complement binary integer model is insanity squared.

But promises are promises and mere insanity is not in itself an obstacle to political success ....

I shall attempt to forget that I ever asked the question :-)

Regards, Nick Maclaren, University of Cambridge Computing Service, New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England. Email: nmm1 at cam.ac.uk Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679



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