On Fri, 23 Jan 2026 19:50:49 GMT, Joe Darcy <[email protected]> wrote:
> First cut at adding modeling interfaces for the algebraic structures of > rings, groups, and fields. > Oh: I said all that because it came up _twice_; the other was: > > > so at least ordered fields would be skipped. > > But the real numbers are an ordered field and a type like `Double` (setting > aside the special values) IS modeling the real numbers. The fact that it's an > imperfect _representation_ of the type it models, that suffers from > saturation/overflow, imho does not change its nature. imho we should not > think of `Double` as having anything to do with algebraic "finite fields" > even though as a representation it is hopelessly finite. To be pedantic, for IEEE 754 floating-point, the specific mathematical object being approximated is not the real numbers (a field with lots of fun bonus properties), but the _extended_ real numbers -- the reals augmented with positive and negative infinity values. Due to the infinities, the extended reals are none of a group, ring, or field, but they do have some useful algebraic properties. ------------- PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/valhalla/pull/1957#issuecomment-3792791469
