Re: [boost] Re: Re: rational interface

From: Kon Lovett (klovett_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-03-26 10:01:36

I read a paper in college about floating-slash arithmetic, and possible 
hardware. Thought it a viable alternative to floating-point. (Paper in 
storage now, or I would give reference, especially since it is from 
~1978.)

My 2 cents - I would love to see a floating-slash representation.

Best wishes,
Kon

On Mar 26, 2005, at 2:06 AM, Andras Erdei wrote:

> Jonathan Turkanis wrote:
>
>>>    template < class unlimited >
>>>  class unlimited
> <snip>
> fxs (and boost::rational when not used with bigints) represent numbers 
> in a
> way similar to fixed point
>
>              +----+ +-------------------+ +--------------------+
> fixed point  |sign| |fixed integer field| |fixed fraction field|
>              +----+ +-------------------+ +--------------------+
>
>              +----+ +---------------------+ +-----------------------+
> fxs/rational |sign| |fixed numerator field| |fixed denominator field|
>              +----+ +---------------------+ +-----------------------+
>
> another option is to use a "floating slash" representation like 
> floating point
> numbers
>
>                +----+ +--------------------+ +--------------------+
> floating point |sign| |fixed mantissa field| |fixed exponent field|
>                +----+ +--------------------+ +--------------------+
>                                 ^                      |
>                                 |                      |
>                                 +----------------------+
>
>                +----+ +-------------------+ +-----------------+
> floating slash |sign| |fixed num/den field| |fixed slash field|
>                +----+ +-------------------+ +-----------------+
>                                 ^                      |
>                                 |                      |
>                                 +----------------------+
>
> this would allow representing very big numbers (when the slash 
> position is
> right to the num/den field the denominator is 1) and very small 
> numbers (when
> the slash poition is left to the num/den field the numerator is 1)
>
>
> br,
> andras
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