Re: [boost] Interest in an arbitrary precision library?

From: Daryle Walker (darylew_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-09-14 01:11:30

On 9/13/05 7:28 AM, "Andy Little" <andy_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> "Daryle Walker" <darylew_at_[hidden]> wrote
> 
>> OK.  When you say "arbitrary precision," you mean that a precision limit
>> must be set (at run-time) before an operation.  Most people use "arbitrary
>> precision" to mean unlimited precision, not your "run-time cut-off"
>> precision.
> 
> Are  there really libraries that have unlimited precision?
> What happens when the result of a computation is irrational?

You can't store it conventionally, since such numbers would need an infinite
amount of memory.  You would just give up and have to define some sort of
rounding/cut-off philosophy.  As another poster said, you could store the
irrational components of a number with some sort of formula (but only for
algebraically irrational numbers, not transcendentally irrational numbers).

-- 
Daryle Walker
Mac, Internet, and Video Game Junkie
darylew AT hotmail DOT com