Re: [Scheme-reports] 6.2 numbers
Andy Wingo 20 May 2011 07:43 UTC
On Fri 20 May 2011 03:22, John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org> writes:
>> R6RS extended `number->string' to take a third argument, "precision".
>> Perhaps this was already brought up on the list but if not, it might be
>> a good addition.
>
> I think multiple precision is basically a leftover. Of my 21 schemes, only
> one actually represents it. For that matter, the free Common Lisps other
> than CLISP (which does pure software floating point) don't bother with it
> either.
This is for printing values, not for representing values. You would use
it as part of an floating-point printing routine.
Guile will probably implement multi-precision floats within the next
year or two. As you probably saw GCC just added a dependency on mpfr,
so as to get compile-time constant folding done right. I wouldn't count
multi-precision floats out yet.
Andy
--
http://wingolog.org/
_______________________________________________
Scheme-reports mailing list
Scheme-reports@scheme-reports.org
http://lists.scheme-reports.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/scheme-reports