Avishalom Shalit wrote:
> well....
> matlab can use variable precision (not automatically though) , so 
> technically , you can accurately represent the number (1e300+1e-300)

Perl has various high precision floating point modules
listed on CPAN:

Math::MPFR
Math::BigFloat
Math::GMPf

> on a side note, if you ever need to, you are probably doing it wrong.
> 
> e.g. 1 - if you are multiplying probabilities , e.g. for a generative 
> statistical model,
> and are approaching underflow,
> work with the LOGs and you'll be doing just fine on doubles.
> e.g. 2 - if your numerical ODE solvers aren't converging right, check 
> your algorithm , precision isn't likely to help you much anyway.
> 
> 
> ----
> the only reason i had ever wanted variable precision was e.g. to 
> calculate pi or e as an exercise using one of the canon formulae
> 
> -- vish
> 
> 
> 2009/11/9 Craig DeForest <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>>
> 
>     PDL has the same precision at Matlab -- they both use double-precision
>     IEEE floating point (on all the usual platforms).
> 
>     On Nov 9, 2009, at 7:11 AM, Gabor Szabo wrote:
> 
>      > I don't recall I ever had to deal with numbers in perl that were too
>      > big or too small for perl but I guess with real engineering stuff
 >      > people will need very good precision and very big numbers.
>      >
>      > In the Matlab tutorial I see it has 16 significant decimal digits in
>      > floating point and
>      > a range of 10**-308 and 10**308.
>      >
>      > What can we say about Perl or PDL in this regard?
>      > How can we deal with cases when really good precision
>      > is required?
>      >
>      > Gabor
>      >
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