I'd say that floats represent *imprecise or approximate *numbers, so 3.0
might mean exactly 3 or some other number in the interval 3-eps .. 3+eps.
-s
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 6:36 PM, Barton Willis <willisb at unk.edu> wrote:
> Maxima says that real floats are noninteger. There are arguments for and
> against this, I think. Of course for binary64 numbers 3.0 = 3
> is 100% true. I have been goofing around with the nonintegerp
> function--ahh it would be a great deal easier to keep the policy that
> floats are noninteger, by the way :)
>
> (%i3) map(lambda([s],featurep(s,'noninteger)),[x,%pi, 2/3, sqrt(42),
> 3.0, 6.0b0, [], [5]]);
> (%o3) [false,true,true,true,true,true,false,false]
>
> --Barton (who blames all recent mistakes on a bad cold).
>
>
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