Do you mean independent for the purposes of editing, or just specifically
for the equality operators?
copy and deepcopy both work for editing purposes:
~~~
julia> a=with_bigfloat_precision(()->BigFloat("0.1"),64)
1.00000000000000000001e-01 with 64 bits of precision
julia> z=copy(a)
1.00000000000000000001e-01 with 64 bits of precision
julia> z += 2
2.1000000000000000000013552527156068805425093160010874271392822265625e+00
with 256 bits of precision
julia> a
1.00000000000000000001e-01 with 64 bits of precision
julia> z
2.1000000000000000000013552527156068805425093160010874271392822265625e+00
with 256 bits of precision
julia> z=deepcopy(a)
1.00000000000000000001e-01 with 64 bits of precision
julia> z += 2
2.1000000000000000000013552527156068805425093160010874271392822265625e+00
with 256 bits of precision
julia> a
1.00000000000000000001e-01 with 64 bits of precision
~~~
I believe that BigFloats, like other numeric values types, are immutable.
This means that you can't tell the difference between instances of the same
value using `==` or even `===`. Every time there is a change a or z, it
acts as if it is just changing the binding to point to a new BigFloat [vs.
modifying the current value]. (I am not sure of the specific implementation
details of BigFloat at this time.)
On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 6:56 PM, Rick Graham <[email protected]> wrote:
> Might be a silly question, but how do you copy a BigFloat so that it is
> independent of the original?
>
>
> julia> a=with_bigfloat_precision(()->BigFloat("0.1"),64)
> 1.00000000000000000001e-01 with 64 bits of precision
>
>
> julia> z=copy(a)
> 1.00000000000000000001e-01 with 64 bits of precision
>
>
> julia> a.d==z.d
> true
>
>
> julia> z=deepcopy(a)
> 1.00000000000000000001e-01 with 64 bits of precision
>
>
> julia> a.d==z.d
> true
>
>
>
>
