[TAG] Paul Sephton's article "A Question Of Rounding"

[René Pfeiffer]

On Oct 03, 2007 at 1547 -0500, Ben Okopnik appeared and said:
> On Wed, Oct 03, 2007 at 10:04:15PM +0200, Ren?? Pfeiffer wrote:
> > 
> > Floating point numbers aren't exact.
> 
> [blink] Pardon my ignorance, but... what's the use of them, then?
> Particularly since the rounding can happen (essentially arbitrarily) in
> any direction?

The rounding is defined as variable in the IEEE 754 standard.

> Also, given the above, _is_ there a way of producing a meaningful
> fixed-point part of a number with precision?

Yes, there is; http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/ has some thoughts on
that. There are other ways of dealing with numbers, that's why I posted
the link to the GMP library and others.

Best wishes,
Ren?.

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