oops, it seems necessary to do this:
ratepsilon:0;
rat(bfloat(0.1));
to get the pquotient error.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: macrakis at gmail.com [mailto:macrakis at gmail.com] On
> Behalf Of Stavros Macrakis
> Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 10:10 AM
> To: fateman at EECS.Berkeley.EDU
> Cc: Richard Hennessy; Maxima List
> Subject: Re: [Maxima] Big float Round off errors
>
> On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 11:27 AM, Richard Fateman
> <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> > Maxima 5.14.0 http://maxima.sourceforge.net
> > Using Lisp GNU Common Lisp (GCL) GCL 2.6.8 (aka GCL)
> > (%i2) rat(bfloat(0.1));
> > `pquotient' by zero
> > -- an error. To debug this try debugmode(true);
>
> This works for me in the same version: Maxima 5.14.0, GCL
> 2.6.8, Windows XP.
>
> -s
>