First, some terminological clarification:
o BFP is IEEE-standard binary floating point;
o DFP is IEEE-standard decimal floating point; and
o HFP is IBM-standard hexadecimal floating point.
To repeat myself now, both BFP and DFP are IEEE-standard.
Next, some very basic mathematic
ALGOL 68 had such a data type, but it proved to be highly problematic.
Available storage was exhausted attempting to determine just how long the
longest representation of a long...long value could be.
John Gilmore Ashland, MA 01721-1817 USA
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Paul,
Briefly, as the polynomials having real, integral coeffficients are
countable/enumerable, so their zeros, the algebraic numbers, are countable too.
The transcendentals, on the other hand, are not countable; and they are thus
much more numerous in Cantor's sense than the algebraic number
Numbers like sqrt(2) are irrational, i.e., not expressible as a fraction having
an integer numerator and denominator.
Numbers like "pi and e" are transcendental. They are a very different kettle
of fish.
Rational numbers have decimal-fraction representations that are either
terminatin
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