newRPL: Alpha demo 0.9 released [UPDATED 2017-10-25]

[Claudio L.]

(08-19-2017 09:10 PM)The Shadow Wrote:  When I run ->Q on the golden ratio, I get (leaving out a lot of digits for brevity):

'1.349E19/8.335E18'

When I run my version on the golden ratio, I get:

'5.528E15/3.416E15'

It turns out those two values are equally precise, but yours has much higher values for the numerator and denominator - hence it is not an actual convergent, which translates into extraneous digits in the continued fraction.

I see. ->Q uses a simple algorithm of invert and take the fractional part. When the algorithm in ->Q doesn't find a good fraction, it keeps going with higher denominators until is reaches 2^63 limit, then exit with whatever fraction was working on at the moment. By your account, I think we could've ended the search a couple of steps earlier, when the fraction already represented the number exactly at the given precision. I'll investigate why it keeps going (that's what you meant by "overshooting"!! now I get it).

BTW, I fixed the overflow issue in IDIV2 (also affected IQUOT and MOD), will come out in the next update. Thanks for the report! (keep them coming).