in reply to Large floating point literals

You're slightly wrong. The values you are seeing displayed are subject to rounding. The biggest is: 

$double = 1.797693134862314e+308;

[download]
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Large floating point literals
by ig (Vicar) on May 20, 2009 at 22:03 UTC

    Thanks!! I had, foolishly, not considered that the displayed base 10 might be rounded.

    Several literals slightly larger than 1.797693134862314e+308 are converted to non-infinite numbers, including two in the following test that are converted to what I believe is the largest possible value.

    Read more... (7 kB)
[reply]
[d/l]

      Indeed. You are correct. I chose the wrong reference: 

      printf "%.20g\n", unpack 'd', scalar reverse pack 'NN', 0x7fefffff, 0x
+ffffffff;;
1.7976931348623157e+308

printf "%.20g\n", unpack 'd', scalar reverse pack 'NN', 0x7fffffff, 0x
+ffffffff;;
1.#QNAN

printf "%.20g\n", unpack 'd', scalar reverse pack 'NN', 0xffefffff, 0x
+ffffffff;;
-1.7976931348623157e+308

printf "%.20g\n", unpack 'd', scalar reverse pack 'NN', 0xffffffff, 0x
+ffffffff;;
-1.#QNAN

      [download]
      Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
      "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
      In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]
[d/l]
[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom