Dear Alexander S. Klenin , > 3) Finally, and relevantly for this list, > should something like this be included into FPC?
I think , in the long run such a facility may be very useful , because some times it is becoming necessary to resort such techniques . In those days I am working on my Fortran programs to improve them . There is a test matrix : Finite segments H ( n ) of Infinite Hilbert matrix : h ( i , j ) = 1 / ( i + j -1 ) , i = 1 ,, n , j = 1 ,, n . This is a very ill-conditioned matrix . In double precision it is not possible to invert around H ( 20 ) because determinant becomes very small . In Free Pascal , by using Extended arithmetic , epsilon as 1.0E-777 , it is not possible to reach H ( 25 ) . This means that in such situations it is necessary to resort multiple precision arithmetic . Personally , I will use an existing multiple precision Fortran package ( I will study contents of www.netlib.org ) , or If I can not find a suitable one , I will write such a Fortran set of subroutines . For the Free Pascal community , having such a facility at hand during solving numerical analysis problems would be very useful . Another important problem is decimal floating point arithmetic , especially for financial or legally required computations . For example , around 1970 , in IBM System/360 , there was BCD : Binary Coded Decimal . ( I do not know previous state prior that date ) . Thank you very much . Mehmet Erol Sanliturk _______________________________________________ fpc-devel maillist - [email protected] http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
