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Hugh Wallis scripsit:
> But my point is that I can never make fractionDigits large enough to reach a
> representation of 1/3 since that would require fractionDigits to equal
> infinity. I want to be able to represent exactly 1/3, not some close
> approximation of it.
>
> Now I know people are going to say "you can't do that in computers because
> of floating point stuff" but that isn't really true - if you represent the
> numerator and denominator separately then you can represent it perfectly
> fine.
Indeed, the Lisp/Scheme family of languages do as a rule implement exact
rational numbers as fractions: (/ 1 3) evaluates to 1/3.
--
Higgledy-piggledy / XML programmers John Cowan
Try to escape those / I-eighteen-N woes; http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Incontrovertibly / What we need more of is http://www.reutershealth.com
Unicode weenies and / Fran\xe7ois Yergeaus. jcowan@reutershealth.com
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