Re: Floating Point?

[tomas]

On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:43:59AM -0300, Betoes wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 06, 2003 at 01:10:21PM -0500, Peter S. Christopher wrote:
> > Hi there listers,
> > 
> >     I've been thinking about how to make my floating point
> > calculations go faster. I thought that my FP calculations where so slow
> 
> I have doubt about the speed of floating point calculations too, but
> because of arbitrary precision of guile floating point
> arthmetics... Does it have a way to turn off this feature? Does it
> really have influence on speedy calculations?

No. Arbitrary precision is for integers (it's impossible to do general
arbitrary precision for reals). Floats in Guile are just machine floats
(properly wrapped as SCMs, which might make them a tad `slower', though).

If I see right, they are just machine doubles, referenced indirectly
through the SCM object (thus the unwrapping costs you a dereference).

Please correct me someone more in the know.

Regards
-- tomas