Maciej Stachowiak wrote: > On Sep 18, 2008, at 6:03 PM, Mark S. Miller wrote: >> [re: <http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html>] >> >> Long long ago I actually had read that document carefully, and I had >> also looked at I think the [Brown 1981] which it cites. (But the doc >> has no bibliography. Anyone have a pointer?) My memory of the theory >> of floating point is that the numbers are exact but the operations are >> approximate. > > I'm not sure what it means for values to be "exact" representations of > real numbers when operations on them break even the most fundamental > identities of real arithmetic. For many values of A, B and C, (A + B) + > C != A + (B + C).
That's because those '+' operators are not real addition; they are floating-point addition (and also the '!=' operator is not real inequality). The values still correspond exactly to real values (we can be more specific and say that they correspond exactly to rational values). -- David-Sarah Hopwood _______________________________________________ Es-discuss mailing list Es-discuss@mozilla.org https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
