Hi Bill,

Perl 6 is converting fractional numbers not into floating-point numbers as most languages, but into Rat (rational) type values. Internally, rational type numbers are in fact made of pairs of integer numbers, one for the numerator and one for the denominator, stored separately. So the numeric literal 319.02 is stored internally as something like (numerator = 31902, denominator = 100). When making arithmetic operations on such numbers, Perl 6 will happily add (or subtract) the integers and then print the result as a rational number. The result is accurate because there is no use of floating-point number approximation.

Consider the following code introspecting the types of values and variables: 

> say 42.WHAT;
(Int)
> say 319.02.WHAT;
(Rat)
> say $x.WHAT;
(Rat)

[download]

In reply to Re^3: Getting stranger values in subtraction by Laurent_R
in thread Getting stranger values in subtraction by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.