Due to the _floating_ point nature of the representation, it's possible for the error
to drift up into the higher order digits if the exponent goes down, as it does in your
example. That's why you need to keep track of significant figures. The result of the
first subtraction has only about 4 or 5 significant figures. This is inherent in
floating point systems, and is not in any way a bug in Palm's floating point
implementation. Try the same thing on your emotionally favorite desktop OS, and you'll
see the very same thing.
--
Peter Epstein
Palm Inc. Developer
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