Lie Ryan wrote: > On Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:15:53 -0500, Steve Holden wrote: > >> Is anyone aware of any implementations that use other than 64-bit >> floating-point? I'd be particularly interested in any that use greater >> precision than the usual 56-bit mantissa. Do modern 64-bit systems >> implement anything wider than the normal double? >> >> regards >> Steve > > Why don't we create a DecimalFloat datatype which is a variable-width > floating point number. Decimal is variable precision fixed-point number, > while the plain ol' float would be system dependent floating point. > Because it's a large amount of work? For a limited return ... the implementation is bound to be hugely slow compared with hardware floating point, and as Martin already pointed out gmpy provides higher-precision arithmetic where required, and the Decimal module provides arbitrary-range fixed-point arithmetic.
regards Steve -- Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/ _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com