From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id QAA07128; Tue, 10 Dec 2002 16:37:20 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA08771 for ; Tue, 10 Dec 2002 16:37:19 +0100 (MET) Received: from cgpsrv1.cis.mcmaster.ca (univmail.CIS.mcmaster.ca [130.113.64.46]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id gBAFbIX29296 for ; Tue, 10 Dec 2002 16:37:18 +0100 (MET) Received: from [24.112.23.91] (HELO marvin) by cgpsrv1.cis.mcmaster.ca (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 3.5.9) with SMTP id 26950320 for caml-list@inria.fr; Tue, 10 Dec 2002 10:37:17 -0500 Reply-To: From: "Jacques Carette" To: Subject: RE: [Caml-list] float pretty-printing precision, once more. Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 10:37:17 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: <97FCFA94-0C40-11D7-B751-0003930FCE12@inria.fr> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Importance: Normal Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Damien Doligez wrote: > In the current working version (3.06+18), the precision used by > string_of_float has been increased to 17 digits. I *think* this > is enough to represent all the double-precision floating-point > numbers: Almost... there are a few (rare) cases where 18 Digits are needed! But 18 is indeed the 'right' number, assuming the system does proper IEEE rounding. I am not an expert on this, but I used to have one as an employee (back when I was manager of the Mathematics Group at Maple), and I learned this from him. > I don't know if we will keep this change for the next release > of O'Caml. Correctness and ease-of-use do clash badly when it comes to FP. I prefer correctness, because latter syntactic sugar can deal with the ease-of-use problem, but the other way around does not work at all. Jacques C. ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners