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authorJay Belanger <jay.p.belanger@gmail.com>2007-04-16 02:56:26 +0000
committerJay Belanger <jay.p.belanger@gmail.com>2007-04-16 02:56:26 +0000
commit6fd06144b6181439761afc8d55f649acd56bd0f8 (patch)
treeca95d35ac82cbedfa805c80b9019b6746d73681e
parentbd149d6ec33b2b80cdb659e3d20af6fc1dca7c25 (diff)
downloademacs-6fd06144b6181439761afc8d55f649acd56bd0f8.tar.gz
(Floats): Mention that when non-decimal floats are entered, only
approximations are stored.
-rw-r--r--man/calc.texi23
1 files changed, 13 insertions, 10 deletions
diff --git a/man/calc.texi b/man/calc.texi
index 15207cc59b8..5ea6ecc1c84 100644
--- a/man/calc.texi
+++ b/man/calc.texi
@@ -10632,16 +10632,19 @@ Calculator's arithmetic is not intended to be IEEE-conformant in any
way.
While floats are always @emph{stored} in decimal, they can be entered
-and displayed in any radix just like integers and fractions. The
-notation @samp{@var{radix}#@var{ddd}.@var{ddd}} is a floating-point
-number whose digits are in the specified radix. Note that the @samp{.}
-is more aptly referred to as a ``radix point'' than as a decimal
-point in this case. The number @samp{8#123.4567} is defined as
-@samp{8#1234567 * 8^-4}. If the radix is 14 or less, you can use
-@samp{e} notation to write a non-decimal number in scientific notation.
-The exponent is written in decimal, and is considered to be a power
-of the radix: @samp{8#1234567e-4}. If the radix is 15 or above, the
-letter @samp{e} is a digit, so scientific notation must be written
+and displayed in any radix just like integers and fractions. Since a
+float that is entered in a radix other that 10 will be converted to
+decimal, the number that Calc stores may not be exactly the number that
+was entered, it will be the closest decimal approximation given the
+current precison. The notation @samp{@var{radix}#@var{ddd}.@var{ddd}}
+is a floating-point number whose digits are in the specified radix.
+Note that the @samp{.} is more aptly referred to as a ``radix point''
+than as a decimal point in this case. The number @samp{8#123.4567} is
+defined as @samp{8#1234567 * 8^-4}. If the radix is 14 or less, you can
+use @samp{e} notation to write a non-decimal number in scientific
+notation. The exponent is written in decimal, and is considered to be a
+power of the radix: @samp{8#1234567e-4}. If the radix is 15 or above,
+the letter @samp{e} is a digit, so scientific notation must be written
out, e.g., @samp{16#123.4567*16^2}. The first two exercises of the
Modes Tutorial explore some of the properties of non-decimal floats.