Re: Float to String

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 15:35:30 +0000, Marius Amado Alves wrote:

> Samuel Tardieu wrote:
>> Each time I read a thread like that, I remember why I really don't
>> like floating point values :)
> 
> Curiuously enough, I am working on adding real types to Mneson, and 
> currently I have only decimal fixed point types:
> 
> "Real values are represented by decimal fixed point types Giganano, 
> Megapico, Teramicro. The name of each type indicates its range and 
> precision, e.g. Giganano values range from -1G to 1G with a precision of 1n.

The first question: what makes you believe that zero should be always
included? It might be needed if unary minus is required to be closed. See
the point? The numeric model is driven by the operations applied, their
accuracy and requirement to be closed on the domain set. But there is no
good reason why 0-x as an operation should be any better than, say, 1/x.
The latter, BTW would lead you directly to floating point representations.
If we consider other various operations we will come to interval
arithmetic, for which the very idea of a singular value (and so "precision
of a value") becomes meaningless.

So the second question: do you have have ADT in your database?

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de