2014-07-29 13:10 GMT-03:00 Stefan Karpinski <[email protected]>: > Integer size is system-dependent while floating-point size is not. The > 8087 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8087> already had 64-bit floats > and every x86 since the i486 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486> > has too, so there's no reason to change the size of floating-point numbers > on different systems. When you write 1.0 in Julia, it is always a Float64. >
Nice. > Real is an abstract type that has many non-floating-point subtypes, > including all integer types and rationals. Being a subtype of Real means, > as the name suggests, that a type represents values on the real number > line. There is a FloatingPoint abstract type, which is closer to what > you're thinking of, but it also includes BigFloat. > That is what I thought. But since Float64 is ubiquitous, why not the cleaner alias Float instead? It would improve readability by a little yet considerable amount, IMHO. The "64" in the symbol is boiler plate for most use cases. Júlio. P.S.: Why Julia users do not hang on IRC? Such trivial questions would be addressed instantly. I guess this mailing list is being misused as an IRC channel. (~54 emails per day).
