David N. Williams wrote:
> 
> Anton Ertl wrote:
> > David N. Williams wrote:
> > 
>  > [...]
> > 
> >>There's a reason to prefer the first version.  Sometimes you
> >>want an accurate decimal representation of a radix 2, 64-bit
> >>floating point number considered as exact.
> > 
> > 
> > This gives very long numbers for small numbers; I would guess around
> > 700 digits in exponential notation and 1000 in plain notation.
> 
> Only if you believe the standard means what it says about 
> significant figures in SET-PRECISION, and not what at least one 
> knowledgable person thought it meant! :-)

My comment was not about ANS Forth at all.  It was simply a statement
about how many digits you need for an exact decimal representation of
2^-1000.  IEEE DP FP numbers can actually can have numbers down to
2^-1055, and 8087 extended precision can have numbers down to 2^-16447.

- anton

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