I'm working on (re)writing some utilies for geospatial work on Plan9, there are lots of floating point numbers (a file outlining the USGS quadrangles for the state of Maine has about 60k). With the current implementation this takes a long time. Maybe I should switch to a binary format (but that's part of what I'm trying to get away from!).
Basically, do folks consider it possible to improve speed while keeping or increasing the precision? A very simple implementation is accurate to ~15 digits, the current one is to 18 digits (though there are some rounding errors). In ways it would be nice to print stored numbers exactly. Yet numbers like 2⁻¹⁰²²+2⁻¹⁰⁷⁴ (767 digits) are stored exactly... 2.2250738585072018771558785585789482407880088486837041956131300312119688603996006965297904292212628858639037013670281908017171296072711910355127227413175152199055740043138804567803233377539881639177387328959246074229270113078053813397081653361296447449529789521218979090783852583365901851789618799885150427514782636076021680436220311292700454832073964845713103912225963935608322440623896907276890186717054549275173986589324810401738228328251245795065655738191038008646911615828719989708647293221449796971546706720399791990809160347625980385995424739847678861180095072511543762389603716215171729816011544604359531284325406441938645324905389137795680915804792405099227413854274942620542640408839836919187418172987793340279242767544565229087538682506419718265533447265625e-308 The current implementation just prints the first 18 digits. Thoughts? Tristan -- All original matter is hereby placed immediately under the public domain.
