Re: [Scheme-reports] 6.2 numbers

[Andy Wingo <wingo@x>]

On Fri 20 May 2011 03:22, John Cowan <cowan@x> writes:

>> R6RS extended `number->string' to take a third argument, "precision".
>> Perhaps this was already brought up on the list but if not, it might be
>> a good addition.
>
> I think multiple precision is basically a leftover.  Of my 21 schemes, only
> one actually represents it.  For that matter, the free Common Lisps other
> than CLISP (which does pure software floating point) don't bother with it
> either.

This is for printing values, not for representing values.  You would use
it as part of an floating-point printing routine.

Guile will probably implement multi-precision floats within the next
year or two.  As you probably saw GCC just added a dependency on mpfr,
so as to get compile-time constant folding done right.  I wouldn't count
multi-precision floats out yet.

Andy
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