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@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
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