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Builtin Float Epsilon? (was: Re: Does python suck or I am just stupid? )

Irmen de Jong irmen at -NOSPAM-REMOVETHIS-xs4all.nl
Sat Feb 22 18:34:55 EST 2003 
Erik Max Francis wrote:
> It is still surprising to me how frequently this issue is attributed to
> a problem in Python, despite being common to essentially all modern
> programming languages (those that implement floating point, anyway).

It is equally surprising to me. Though I suspect that it can be 
attributed to the expectations people have about Python, being a very 
high level language. Perhaps they think that such a language somehow 
shields them from these low-level machine artifacts. Depending on your 
point of view, this may or may not be a right expectation.

If they are working with C (for instance), which is much closer to the 
machine, they are perhaps already in the right 'mindset' and sort of 
expect these things to occur, and act accordingly without thinking about 
the issue.

Irmen de Jong

PS. is there a language (apart from the already mentioned ABC) that 
doesn't use the machine floating point datatype for floats?
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