Re: Floats? (was Re: Wishful thinking)

• Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 11:52:17 PST
• From:
  tom@mvision.com (Tom Ritchford)
• Reply-To:
  tom@mvision.com
• In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960117144710.16297A-100000@copper.ucs.indiana.edu> (message from Christopher Scott Delaney on Wed, 17 Jan 1996 14:48:59 -0500 (EST))

Christopher Scott Delaney <cdelaney@indiana.edu> writeth:
>On Wed, 17 Jan 1996, Tom Ritchford wrote:
[snip]
>> The problem is that floats are slow and can be large.
>
>We've used floating point functions for over a year now on a MOO I'm 
>helping to develop. (read: not yet open to the public).  They are, in 
>fact, very useful and not slow at all if coded correctly.  And we aren't 
>using them to represent the entire universe, just the area surrounding 
>Jupiter and its MOOns :)

Well, certainly direct experience is the most important.

But what could you be doing with floating point numbers
that couldn't be done with ints and a suitable choice
of scale?  (ie -- 1 corresponds to 1 microgram or
1 millimeter or...)

The mind boggles!

    /t

Tom Ritchford     tom@mvision.com, tom@weirdos.com

Verge's "Little Idiot" -- Music for the mentally peculiar.
1-800-WEIRDOS           http://www.fly.net/~tom/verge.html

• Re: Floats? (was Re: Wishful thinking)
• From: Christopher Scott Delaney <cdelaney@indiana.edu>

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