On 23.12.2009 03:10, jzakiya wrote:

> But...being able to do ACCURATE MATH creates benefits
> that far supercede any hassles to write the core to do it.

Floats won't be properly accurate in a mathematical sense, anyway, since 
they are approximations. Their accuracy is highly dependend on the WORD 
length of a CPU / Mathematical Co-processor (i.e. 8bit, 16bit, 32bit, 
64bit, 128bit, etc).

Further reading provides: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754-2008

Your apparently required level of accuracy is the realm of specialized 
math libraries, if not specialized languages and/or hardware, since it 
isn't needed in most (any?) circumstances by Average J. Programmer. Only 
a select few of us get to write code for, say, CERN. ;)

Then there's existing code to consider. AFAIK, IEEE 754 is the way Ruby 
handles floating point numbers, and there *will* be code that relies, 
for better or for worse, on this behavior (and rather rightly, since 
IEEE 754 is the accepted standard to handle floats), and a higher level 
of accuracy could cause quite a number of ripple effects, requiring a 
carefully planned change (maybe an eventual Ruby 2.0 even).

--
Phillip Gawlowski