[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
comparisons between floats and ratios
- To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
- Subject: comparisons between floats and ratios
- From: "Gail Zacharias" <GZ%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
- Date: Mon 27 Jan 86 08:42:53-EST
Is (> a-rational a-float) supposed to err out when (float a-rational a-float)
would overflow? If so, there should at least be some way to tell ahead of time
if that's going to happen, for people who want to write a more careful
comparison routine. The only way I can figure out of doing this now is
(> a-ratio (rational most-positive-xx-float)). Consing up a bignum
representation of the largest float seems like a high price to pay for being
careful.
Since most floating point implementations can (internally at least) represent
infinity, it shouldn't cause a great loss of efficiency to require that this
case return T.
A not-entirely-unrelated question: What kind of rounding is FLOAT supposed
to do?
-------