Intrepid Blog » floating points http://blog.affien.com A few thoughts Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:47:37 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Variable sized floating points http://blog.affien.com/archives/2005/01/22/variable-sized-floating-points/ http://blog.affien.com/archives/2005/01/22/variable-sized-floating-points/#comments Sat, 22 Jan 2005 10:13:50 +0000 Bas Westerbaan http://blog.w-nz.com/archives/2005/01/22/variable-sized-floating-points/ A lot of selfrespecting programming languages have got Integer classes which theoraticly can have an unlimited size by using a dynamic array underneath it.
Python got it, and lots of others too.
But still, they haven’t got a variable sized floating point, which I find odd for it shouldn’t be a big problem to create:

  • Wrap one existing variable sized Integer
  • Add an integer which points to the place where the point will be
  • Add operator overrides to get it working
  • Add an integer which specifies how much numbers after the dot there will be

The later one is quite important to have got. We wouldn’t want 1 /3 causing an infinite loop.

You even could do it a second way:

  • Wrap two existing variable sized Integers.
  • Add overriden operators to get it working

These 2 integers would represent a fraction: a / b.

By storing the fraction in stead of the result you are actually very precise, although some numbers cannot be represented in this way, but can be approached.

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