== Quote from Paul D. Anderson (paul.d.removethis.ander...@comcast.andthis.net)'s article > Is there an active project to develop arbitrary-precision floating point > numbers for D? > I've got a little extra time at the moment and would like to contribute if I can. I've done some work in floating point arithmetic and would be willing to start/complete/add to/test/design/etc. such a project. What I hope NOT to do is to re-implement someone else's perfectly adequate code. > If no such project exists I'd like to start one. If there are a bunch of half-finished attempts (I have one of those), let's pool our efforts. > I know several contributors here have a strong interest and/or background in numerics. I'd like to hear inputs regarding: > a) the merits (or lack) of having an arbitrary-precision floating point type > b) the features and functions that should be included. > Just to be clear -- I'm talking about a library addition here, not a change in the language. > Paul
Absolutely, I would love having a BigFloat in D, especially if it were in Phobos and thus worked straight out of the box and had a good API (should be relatively easy to make a good API with all the new language features geared toward lib writers that have been added lately). In addition to the obvious uses for BigFloat, here's a not so obvious one: You're writing some kind of quick and dirty numerics simulation that only has to run a few times. You know of a really simple, elegant algorithm for your problem, except that it's numerically unstable. You do not want to spend the time to implement a more complicated algorithm because it's just not worth it given the computer time-programmer time tradeoff in question. Solution: Use a BigFloat and be done with it. (Flame guard up: No, I don't recommend this for any production numerics algorithms, but who the heck doesn't sometimes write bad code focused on ease of implementation if it's just a one-off thing?)
