In Scheme do any numbers start out inexact except, perhaps, floating point
values?  Hmmm...I guess I can also see that many functions (e.g. trig
functions and logarithms) might produce inexact values.  Or is my dislike
for floating point numbers coloring my view here too much?

If we get rid of floating point (or restrict its ease of use dramatically)
do we reduce the degree of inexactness in mathematical expressions by any
meaningful degree?  My intuition says yes, but I have no experience with an
exact/inexact system such as Scheme.

Bob Jarvis
Compuware @ Timken

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael S. Klein [mailto:mklein at alumni.caltech.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 9:15 PM
> To: Peter Hatch
> Subject: Re: FixedPoint asString? 
> 
> 
> It would be cool if Smalltalk adopted the notion of exact and inexact 
> numbers from Scheme.
> 
> Scheme numbers are either exact or inexact. A number is
> exact if it was written as an exact constant or was derived from
> exact numbers using only exact operations. A number is
> inexact if it was written as an inexact constant, if it was derived
> using inexact ingredients, or if it was derived using inexact
> operations. Thus inexactness is a contagious property of a
> number. 
> 
>   (From: 	http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/r5rs_8.html#SEC52  )
> 
> -- Mike
> 
> 
>