However, one of the bignum samples: 

      perl -Mbignum -le 'print sqrt(33)'

[download]

behaves in one of the ways I would expect, in that it returns:

5.74456264653802865985061146821892931822

[download]

The other way I would expect would be for it to return 5, which would be cosnistent with 33 being treated as an integer.

Also, another sample:

perl -Mbignum -le 'print 2 ** 0.5'
returns:
1.41421356237309504880168872420969807857

[download]

This is also inconsistent with 2**0.5 being treated as an integer.

Returning NaN for raising an integer to a negative power is not consistent with the documentation (nowhere is it said that "raising an integer to a negative power results in NaN) and it is also inconsistent with other Perl behavior (1/10 doesn't return NaN)

Also, I just tried (on my FreeBSD box, at home) this:

perl -Mbignum -le 'print 10.01 ** -1'

[download]

and had it returned

0.0999000999000999000999000999000999000999

[download]

This is consistent with syphilis' conmments.

emc

At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation.

—Igor Sikorsky, reported in AOPA Pilot magazine February 2003.

In reply to Re^2: use bignum and exponentiation by swampyankee
in thread use bignum and exponentiation by swampyankee

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