Re: Storing trailing zeros in mantissa

> As you said, I'm not a scientinst, but I don't remember being taught
> that 10.2 is any different from 10.20 - unless you are thinking of
> heading down the rounding from 99.999 to 99.99 route ? (you know, 10.201
> becomed 10.20 and so *is* different from 10.2 which is 10.2 ?)

10.2 is no different than 10.20, no matter how you slice it. They are the same number. Just pull it out with a format mask if you want it represented differently.

The idea that the trailing zero has "meaning", i.e. plus or minus some factor, is not a scientific approach. If I meant 10.205 or 10.195, then I'd store that number, pure and simple. If this trailing zero were allowed to hold meaning (other than zero), then how do you handle that when you perform computations with these numbers? You're better off coming up with your own metric space......  

Cheers,
Brian

P.S. I'm not a scientist, I just play one on tv.

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