From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 25276 invoked from network); 14 Sep 1999 16:31:31 -0000 Received: from sunsite.auc.dk (130.225.51.30) by ns1.primenet.com.au with SMTP; 14 Sep 1999 16:31:31 -0000 Received: (qmail 6585 invoked by alias); 14 Sep 1999 16:31:21 -0000 Mailing-List: contact zsh-workers-help@sunsite.auc.dk; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk X-No-Archive: yes X-Seq: 7828 Received: (qmail 6578 invoked from network); 14 Sep 1999 16:31:21 -0000 Message-Id: <9909141556.AA22292@ibmth.df.unipi.it> To: zsh-workers@sunsite.auc.dk (Zsh hackers list) Subject: Floating point support? Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 17:56:15 +0200 From: Peter Stephenson I'm thinking about adding some floating point support to zsh; this is just to canvas opinions. My idea is to add a floating point parameter type, together with support in math evaluations (which would involve stuff like promoting integers to floats etc.). It would be easiest to make the floating point type the same size as the integer type, i.e. usually double if longs are 64 bits or if long longs are in use, float otherwise. - Does anyone object to sullying the integral purity of zsh with decimal points and exponents? - Is anyone able to summarise what the status is with other shells (particularly ksh)? - What about functions? We could supply some basic maths functions, or could put them in a loadable module, which would require yet more support for hooks, although it's certainly more flexible (write your own library routines). This may mean some more configuration checking for capabilities, although I think basic maths library routines are universal. (We could even make it forget to put -lm on the link line the first time, just to make users feel at home :-) :-).) -- Peter Stephenson Tel: +39 050 844536 WWW: http://www.ifh.de/~pws/ Dipartimento di Fisica, Via Buonarroti 2, 56127 Pisa, Italy