> last $ takeWhile (\x -> 1 + x /= 1) (iterate (/2) 1) 2.220446049250313e-16
This works because of the way IEEE floating-point numbers are represented, so it's good for the majority of machines, but it is technically a hack, in that it depends on a representation of floating-point numbers in some form akin to the IEEE (1.mantissa bits)*2^(exponent). It would be nice for those of us interested in doing numerical work in Haskell if we could have machine epsilon available from the language, in case we're running on a machine where that assumption doesn't hold. I don't know where this would belong -- the Numeric library seems mainly concerned with reading and showing numbers, and System is more about interacting with the OS than making statements about the properties of the underlying hardware. --Grady Lemoine _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
