[boost] Re: rational with finite precision

From: Jonathan Turkanis (technews_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-12 13:24:40

Mickey Moore wrote:

> If someone wants the best approximation rather than the exact answer,
> they would probably just be using floating point.  rational is used
> when people want an exact answer, not just an approximation.

Agreed.

> I think it would be more useful to add a mechanism (probably
> optional) for reporting when such overflows ocurred (or some
> equivalent to floating point NANs and INFs, perhaps).

I'm now the maintainer of Boost.Rational, although I haven't made any changes
yet (the only change I've been planning to make is to make int_type public).

It might be useful to introduce a checked_rational template, interconvertible
with rational, which throws upon overflow. When I get a little less far behind
with my current projects, I'm planning to post here asking for feature requests.

Jonathan