Re: Motion 46: finalise interval literals
On 2013-07-12 11:02:44 +0100, John Pryce wrote:
> On 12 Jul 2013, at 08:42, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> >> I think that this phrase from the text is sufficient:
> >> "One ulp equals one unit in the last place of the number m as written."
> >
> > Perhaps, however it isn't very well said: "the number m as written"
> > still refers to a number, not a string or representation. I would
> > prefer something like:
> >
> > One ulp equals the unit (weight) of the last written digit.
>
> I was brought up from elementary school with "place" having this
> technical meaning, as in "Ones place", "Tens place", "Hundreds
> place" etc., so it is actually preciser language than "digit". The
> "place" is the slot where you write a "digit".
>
> So I prefer to keep "place". However it may not be familiar to
> non-native English speakers? I would welcome a suggested sentence of
> explanation to add, along with examples like those below.
I don't see an obvious definition in my dictionary. It is rather
a synonymous of "position". From the definition of ulp, it looks
like the ulp is a function of m, not the string representing it.
> Oh dear, this octal convention is C? I thought it was some
> outlandish language hardly anyone had heard of.
I wish the support for octal literals were removed from C (or
changed to 0o, as they can still look nice for chmod()), like
what has been done with trigraphs.
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)