On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 10:46:50PM -0400, John Burger wrote: > >>Considering that the SQL spec says the result of multiplication of > >>exact > >>numeric types is exact numeric types of precision S1+S2, and > >>exponentiation is nothing more than repeated multiplication, > > > >... not when the exponent is non-integral. > > For one thing. For another, I believe the standard C library only has > floating point exponentiation functions, not that there aren't plenty > of numeric libraries with integral ones. Finally, exponentiated > numbers get real big, real fast, and the floating point types can hold > much larger magnitudes than the integer types, albeit inexactly. For > example, on the Mac I'm using now, long long ints max out at about > 10^19, while long doubles can represent 10^308. Well, we already have an interesting library of mathematical functions for NUMERIC (which is an arbitrary precision type, so it wouldn't matter how big the result would get). I think the only reason we don't have a NUMERIC exponentiation function is that nobody has implemented it. -- Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]surnet.cl>) "People get annoyed when you try to debug them." (Larry Wall) ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
