Info Catalog gawk: MPFR features gawk: Arbitrary Precision Arithmetic gawk: Arbitrary Precision Integers

gawk: FP Math Caution

 
 15.4 Floating-Point Arithmetic: Caveat Emptor!
 ==============================================
 
      Math class is tough!
                    -- _Teen Talk Barbie, July 1992_
 
    This minor node provides a high-level overview of the issues involved
 when doing lots of floating-point arithmetic.(1)  The discussion applies
 to both hardware and arbitrary-precision floating-point arithmetic.
 
      CAUTION: The material here is purposely general.  If you need to do
      serious computer arithmetic, you should do some research first, and
      not rely just on what we tell you.
 

Menu

 
· Inexactness of computations Floating point math is not exact.
· Getting Accuracy            Getting more accuracy takes some work.
· Try To Round                Add digits and round.
· Setting precision           How to set the precision.
· Setting the rounding mode   How to set the rounding mode.
 
    ---------- Footnotes ----------
 
    (1) There is a very nice paper on floating-point arithmetic
 (http://www.validlab.com/goldberg/paper.pdf) by David Goldberg, "What
 Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic,"
 'ACM Computing Surveys' *23*, 1 (1991-03): 5-48.  This is worth reading
 if you are interested in the details, but it does require a background
 in computer science.
 

Info Catalog gawk: MPFR features gawk: Arbitrary Precision Arithmetic gawk: Arbitrary Precision Integers