Re: external floating-point representations

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Paul,

> Perhaps this is because I am a fan of shorter, more-intuitive numbers. You can
> blame me for the fact that in Emacs the double-precision floating-point number
> closest to 0.1 displays as "0.1" rather than as the more-precise but uglier
> "0.10000000000000001".

Likewise, in Lisp culture, this kind of shorter external representation of
floating-point is used:
- In Common Lisp, it is specified by the standard [1]. The goal to use as few
  digits as possible is implicit.
- Likewise, in Scheme, it is specified by the standard [2].
- Some schemers even thought it was worthwhile to write a paper about their
  implementation of this specification. [3].

Bruno

[1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/util/html/cltl/clm/node187.html
    "reading a printed representation produces an object that is ... equal to
     the originally printed object."
[2] 
http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/HTML/r5rs-Z-H-9.html#%_sec_6.2.6
    "... is expressed using the minimum number of digits ..."
[3] http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dyb/pubs/FP-Printing-PLDI96-abstract.html