Raymond Hettinger added the comment: I suggest changing the main docs to match the existing docstring, "Return e raised to the power of x."
The exp() function is a thin wrapper around the C math library and where it is documented as "compute e (the base of natural logarithms) raised to the power x" or "e raised to the power X (where e is the base of the natural system of logarithms, approximately 2.71828)." Our docs shouldn't make more or fewer promises than the upstream libraries are making. Perhaps there can be a general note about reading too much into the math module implementation details. We expect some relationships to only be approximate: log(x)+1≈log1p(x), log2(x)≈log(x,2.0), exp(lgamma(x))≈gamma(x), sqrt(x)≈x**0.5, etc. These are floating point math library "facts of life". * http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/unix/package/rtems/doc/html/libm/libm.info.exp.html * https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Exponents-and-Logarithms.html ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue29956> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
