Re: Comments on GNU APL

[Kacper Gutowski]

On Thu, Jan 09, 2020 at 07:53:17PM +0000, Mr. Brian B. McGuinness wrote:
>    For example, if I do
> 
>          )wsid test
>    WAS CLEAR WS
>          sec2rad ← 4.8481368110953599359e¯6
>          )dump
> 
>    and then I look at the test.apl file, I see
> 
>    sec2rad←0.00000484813681109536
> 
>    so I have lost five digits.

No, you have lost only 3 when converting the number you initially entered
to double precision floating point representation, long before dumping.
The dumped value has enough digits to recover it *exactly*:

      ⎕CT←0
      0.00000484813681109536 = 4.8481368110953599359e¯6
1
      25⍕⍪ 0.00000484813681109536 4.8481368110953599359e¯6
 .0000048481368110953599881
 .0000048481368110953599881


(But otherwise I'm indifferent to the proposal of changing )DUMP format.)

-k