At least Unums (1.0) and Arbs don't have that annoying asymmetry of IEEE floating point, you have exact zero, or inexact pos or neg "really small close to zero" in Unums, or zero with a radius of 0, or a 0 with radius that can be *quite* small around zero (+/-), or something that can be as small as possible positive (but not zero), or small as possible negative (but not zero), with Arbs. Nice and symmetric, which appeals to some of my OCD-like traits!
I've lately come to greatly appreciate Arbs compared to IEEE floats, thanks to Jeffrey Sarnoff's talk, and a number of people's work bringing Fredrijk Johansson's C Arb package https://github.com/fredrik-johansson/arb to Julia, in WB Hart's et. al. Nemo.jl package https://github.com/wbhart/Nemo.jl, and Jeffrey's https://github.com/JuliaArbTypes/ArbFloats.jl. On Saturday, July 9, 2016 at 7:40:58 AM UTC-4, Tom Breloff wrote: > > Yes. They are different numbers. In a way, negative zero represents "a > really small negative number" that can't be represented exactly using > floating point.
