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Nits.

This commit is contained in:
Raymond Hettinger 2009-04-17 09:45:19 +00:00
parent 3e09f43e06
commit fee346b5c4
1 changed files with 4 additions and 4 deletions
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Doc/whatsnew/3.1.rst
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@ -155,7 +155,7 @@ Some smaller changes made to the core Python language are:
The significance is easily seen with a number like ``1.1`` which does not
have an exact equivalent in binary floating point. Since there is no exact
equivalent, an expression like ``float("1.1")`` evaluates to the nearest
equivalent, an expression like ``float('1.1')`` evaluates to the nearest
representable value which is ``0x1.199999999999ap+0`` in hex or
``1.100000000000000088817841970012523233890533447265625`` in decimal. That
nearest value was and still is used in subsequent floating point
@ -163,16 +163,16 @@ Some smaller changes made to the core Python language are:
What is new is how the number gets displayed. Formerly, Python used a
simple approach. The value of ``repr(1.1)`` was computed as ``format(1.1,
'.17g')`` which evaluates to ``'1.1000000000000001'``. The advantage of
'.17g')`` which evaluated to ``'1.1000000000000001'``. The advantage of
using 17 digits was that it relied on IEEE-754 guarantees to assure that
``eval(repr(1.1))`` would round-trip exactly to its original value. The
disadvantage is that many people found the output to be confusing (mistaking
intrinsic limitations of binary floating point representation as being a
problem with Python itself).
The new algorithm for ``repr(1.1)`` is smarter and returns ``1.1``.
The new algorithm for ``repr(1.1)`` is smarter and returns ``'1.1'``.
Effectively, it searches all equivalent string representations (ones that
get stored as the same underlying float value) and returns the shortest
get stored with the same underlying float value) and returns the shortest
representation.
The new algorithm tends to emit cleaner representations when possible, but