Free42 with IEEE 754-2008 decimal floating-point -- interested in a sneak preview?

[Thomas Okken]

(03-18-2014 07:16 AM)Werner Wrote:  On a real 42S, LOG(9.99999999999) = 1, exactly. Meaning it is the closest number to the exact result. The same holds for any precision. On Free42 Decimal-34, LOG(1e34-1) is 34 and LOG(1e33-1) is 33, exactly, and that's what the result should be.

Good point. I don't want to return incorrect results just for the convenience of a flawed algorithm!
OK, I'll fix LOG like this: use the bid128_ilogb and bid128_scalbn functions to pull out the exponent and normalize the mantissa to the range [1, 10), then use bid128_log10 on the normalized mantissa, and finally add the exponent to the result. That will return exact results for powers of ten, without introducing numerical inconsistencies.