Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> generally shorthand for the IEEE 754 Floating Point standard

Yes, generally, but that is just a social convention. There is nothing stopping you from doing floating point in base 10 rather than base 2, and if you do, 0.1 becomes representable exactly. It's just a quirk that 1/10 happens to be a repeating decimal in base 2. It is in no way a reflection of a limitation on computation.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: