Inherent imprecision of floating point variables

[Steve Emmerson]

In <14429 at lambda.UUCP> jlg at lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles) writes:

>...
>The job of the conversion routines is to convert the decimal into the internal
>representations and vice-versa.  They _should_ do this job as accurately as
>possible - if the number is exacly representable in both bases you have a
>right to expect exact conversion.

A right?

Granted by whom?

Steve Emmerson        steve at unidata.ucar.edu        ...!ncar!unidata!steve