On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:13:39 -0600, you wrote:
On Tue, 2011-09-27 at 12:36 -0400, Steve Schafer wrote:
[0.1,0.2..0.5] isn't the problem. The problem is coming up with something that not only works for [0.1,0.2..0.5], but also works for [0.1,0.2..1234567890.5].
A good rule of thumb: For every proposal that purports to eliminate having to explicitly take into consideration the limited precision of floating-point representations, there exists a trivial example that breaks that proposal.
If by "trivial" you mean easy to construct, sure. But if you mean typical, that's overstating the case by quite a bit.
There are plenty of perfectly good uses for floating point numbers, as long as you keep in mind a few simple rules:
Your "rules" are what I meant by "...having to explicitly take into consideration the limited precision of floating-point representations." The problem, of course, is that people would rather not have to follow any rules, and that floating-point arithmetic would just work the way they think it ought to. -Steve Schafer