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> There are a lot of libraries in a lot of languages for supporting arbitrary precision, big numbers, and other various representations. I’d venture to say that
by ogogmad 6y ago
> There are a lot of libraries in a lot of languages for supporting arbitrary precision, big numbers, and other various representations. I’d venture to say that almost every programming language does have it, if you count a third party or open source library as having it.
Arbitrary precision is very different from exact real arithmetic.
- dahart 6y agoSure I agree completely and didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. Most languages have implementations of all the above - attempts at certain types of exact real, arbitrary precision, and big integers. It’s worth noting that this library is made out of big nums and rationals, so it tries to be exact when it can, but it can’t always, so it may not be accurate to call it exact real arithmetic. That’s why the title is “toward” real numbers and didn’t claim to be exact. And I’m curious whether you meant that exact real arithmetic is different in such a way that it would change either of the points that I made? Does it mean that performance is good enough that all languages should have it built in? Does it mean that approximation errors should then be considered the same as execution errors?