On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 10:08 AM, Neil Girdhar <mistersh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 5:52 PM Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote: >> >> - slower; >> - larger errors when converting from decimal numbers (in general); >> - larger rounding errors; >> - larger wobble; > > > I don't see why it would have any of those problems. Base 10 isn't special > in any way.
Base 10 *is* special, because it corresponds to what humans use. In binary floating-point, you get weird results (by human standards) like 0.1+0.2 not being 0.3; that doesn't happen in decimal. There is no error when converting from a string of decimal digits to a decimal.Decimal, so presumably to avoid error, you'd have to work with digits in the same base. The rounding errors and wobble are by comparison with binary; you get the same problems in any other base, without the benefit of human-friendly behaviour. > Right, I was playing with this problem > (https://brilliant.org/weekly-problems/2017-10-02/advanced/?problem=no-computer-needed) > and wanted to work in base 2. I realize it's niche, but it's not exactly a > significant change to the interface even if it's a big change to the > implementation. You should be able to use the native float type for binary floating-point. But the whole point of that challenge is that you shouldn't need a computer. ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
