"Dan Bishop" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > tom wrote: <snip> > > That last digit will *always* contain some arithmetic slop. > > Your statement is misleading, because it suggests that your processor > stores digits. It doesn't; it stores *bits*.
Your explanation is much clearer and more than I knew. And I am sorry you found my statement a bit misleading. But I never implied details about how things were stored internally. No matter what computer, calculater, slide rule or programming language - a floating point number will always exhibit "arithmetic slop" at the last significant digit. This is a property inherent to floating point numbers and has nothing to do with how it is stored on any machine. Thomas Bartkus -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
