On Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 12:37 PM William Tanksley, Jr <wtanksle...@gmail.com> wrote: > Raul Miller <rauldmil...@gmail.com> wrote: > > They can, which is disturbing. > > However, they don't have to (and they have some other advantages, also...). > > They do have to (round and otherwise display non-arithmetic behavior). > All floats are actually rational numbers which follow a specific > format and truncate in specific ways.
They have to in some cases, but not for all cases. Rational representations also have to for some cases - typically far fewer cases (depending on context), because they have more bits but that's a space/time tradeoff (which of course can be worth taking). Nevertheless, 2=1+1 regardless of representation (for example). That said... yes, if you are working with rationals, and you get a floating result, you should treat that as a significant error (probably a coding error). Thanks, -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
