I will give this one more shot, as there is an exceptionally serious flaw here.
To get this out of the way once again, I understand that asking for a decimal expansion of an irrational number does not entitle me to something the computer can't answer. The computer should behave like an employee. If I ask you as an employee for the 16th decimal expansion of %: 2, I prefer an employee to say "I don't know" rather than "just use 42. I like 42." Arguments for why 42 is good are irrelevant. Whether 42 is best is irrelevant. It is irrelevant because I do not wish to prevent anyone from continuing to bask in the extacy that 42 brings them. If quick lies are preferred by most, then that is all that matters in determining what the DEFAULT behaviour should be. It would be widely useful even to those who prefer the default behaviour, to have an additional mode. I am better able to compensate for my deficiency of not having memorized the 16th+ decimal expansions of %: 2 if I am not told false expansions of that number. In problem domains where greater precision is required, it quickly becomes obvious that some other approach to gaining extra precision is needed. I'm only asking that the usefulness of this approach, which incidentally has been favoured by every known programming environment, be recognized as a validly useful tool When programming, I sometimes make a mistake such that the program I thought would solve a problem doesnt. I guess this never happens for you. But verifying that %:n calculated "correctly" is at the end of a very long list of checks of the program. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
