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From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
Newsgroups: gnu.utils.bug
Subject: Re: Bug in dc
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2018 16:23:00 -0400
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To: Russell Harper <russell.s.harper@gmail.com>
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Xref: csiph.com gnu.utils.bug:2246

That's because bc uses base-10 arithmetic internally.  It is the equal and
opposite phenomenon to the loss of significance in other languages when
using standard base-2 floating point.

On Tue, Jul 17, 2018 at 3:28 PM, Russell Harper <russell.s.harper@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Literal real values in bases other than 10 lose precision, e.g.
>
> $ dc <<<'16 d i o F423F.FD p'
> F423F.FA
>
> Would expect the output to be F423F.FD
>
> It basically makes the calculator useless for non-decimal calculations.
>
> Regards,
>
> Russell
>