🚀 go-pugleaf

May I ask how my suggestion is based on base 10?

All I'm suggesting is that there should be an option to use the DX:AX
combination to imply a 'decimal point' (or base 2 point) and represent a
fixed value, rather than just dividing 1 by AX to get the fraction.

Please correct me if this is wrong, I have not 'officially' been taught
the low-down on floating point numbers, I've merely picked up what I
could to get me by.

Tudor

Roedy Green wrote:

> On Thu, 04 Mar 1999 23:57:30 +1100, Tudor Holton
> <tudor@alphalink.com.au> wrote:
>
> >I've never understood why we can't just represent numbers after the
> >decimal place as the size in reverse.  e.g. 16.16 would be A:3D  (or
> >16:61 in decimal)
>
> Mike Cowlishaw (The inventor of Rexx and NetRexx) would agree with
> you.  He has been lobbying for floating point hardware to be
> redesigned to work in base 10 rather than base 2 to avoid these
> anomalies.  People are used to .3333... + .66666 = .9999 but they
> don't expect 0.1 to behave the same way.
>
> I disagree.  Binary arithmetic is faster and simpler.  The repeaters
> just move to different places.  You can't get rid of them.  If you
> want absolute precision, use scaled integer arithmetic which is many
> times faster that floating point (e.g. integer pennies for currency,
> with a decorative decimal point inserted for display).
>
> For the JAVA GLOSSARY and the CMP Utilities: <http://mindprod.com>
> --
> Roedy Green,  Canadian Mind Products
> -30-