bigfloat

[Paul D. Anderson]

Denis Koroskin Wrote:

> On Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:54:02 +0400, Frank Torte <frankt123978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Paul D. Anderson Wrote:
> >
> >> Is there an active project to develop arbitrary-precision floating  
> >> point numbers for D?
> >>
> >> I've got a little extra time at the moment and would like to contribute  
> >> if I can. I've done some work in floating point arithmetic and would be  
> >> willing to start/complete/add to/test/design/etc. such a project. What  
> >> I hope NOT to do is to re-implement someone else's perfectly adequate  
> >> code.
> >>
> >> If no such project exists I'd like to start one. If there are a bunch  
> >> of half-finished attempts (I have one of those), let's pool our efforts.
> >>
> >> I know several contributors here have a strong interest and/or  
> >> background in numerics. I'd like to hear inputs regarding:
> >>
> >> a) the merits (or lack) of having an arbitrary-precision floating point  
> >> type
> >>
> >> b) the features and functions that should be included.
> >>
> >> Just to be clear -- I'm talking about a library addition here, not a  
> >> change in the language.
> >>
> >> Paul
> >>
> >>
> >
> > When you can use a number in D that is more than the number of atoms in  
> > the known universe why would you want a bigger number?
> 
> I'd like to calculate pi with up to 20000 valid digits. Or a square root of 2 with the same precision. How do I do that?


I've got some Java code that will do that -- not here with me at work. Of course, it uses Java's BigDecimal class -- that's what D doesn't seem to have.

Paul