On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:13:39 -0600, you wrote: >On Tue, 2011-09-27 at 12:36 -0400, Steve Schafer wrote: >> [0.1,0.2..0.5] isn't the problem. The problem is coming up with >> something that not only works for [0.1,0.2..0.5], but also works for >> [0.1,0.2..1234567890.5]. >> >> A good rule of thumb: For every proposal that purports to eliminate >> having to explicitly take into consideration the limited precision of >> floating-point representations, there exists a trivial example that >> breaks that proposal. > >If by "trivial" you mean easy to construct, sure. But if you mean >typical, that's overstating the case by quite a bit. > >There are plenty of perfectly good uses for floating point numbers, as >long as you keep in mind a few simple rules:
Your "rules" are what I meant by "...having to explicitly take into consideration the limited precision of floating-point representations." The problem, of course, is that people would rather not have to follow any rules, and that floating-point arithmetic would just work the way they think it ought to. -Steve Schafer _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [email protected] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
