Re: a numeric bug.
Re: a numeric bug.
- Subject: Re: a numeric bug.
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 19:44:59 +0100
deivy petrescu wrote:
>Somehow I feel that if a program offers the tool and makes no point on the limits of the tool, something is really wrong. This goes for AppleScript, and as has pointed out, for Python as well.
It's true of most out-of-the-box languages. AS and Python probably use the exact same C libraries for their built-in math support, as would most other C-based languages. If you want the fancy stuff, you either use a specialised language that provides it as standard, or suitable third-party extensions.
BTW, the Python docs do state that numbers are "subject to the limitations of numerical representation in computers". They probably assume that if you're smart enough to be doing the sort of specialised calculations where it's an issue, you're also smart enough to already be aware of this issue and how to deal with it (e.g. by using suitably specialised third-party libraries in place of the general-purpose built-in types).
>>If you want arbitrary precision or strict financial math, you're using the wrong language, and you should stop one or the other.
>
>Chris, I am well aware that you know Smile.
>Many people may not know it and know that is a full fledge Scientific software used in many scientific institutions.
Smile is a wonderful piece of kit (I love it myself), but AppleScript and OSA [1] are not the strongest of foundations to build serious scientific software upon and Chris's point stands. If you have a problem doing scientific calculations in Smile, you really ought to take it up with Satimage, not Apple.
has
[1] There are no formal (i.e. Apple-defined) Apple event types for representing arbitrary-precision integers and floats and complex numbers, which doesn't help either. Feel free to file a feature request on that.
--
http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/
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