[m-rev.] for review: float__pow: accept negative exponent; Russian peasants alg

[Peter Moulder]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2002 at 07:40:22PM +1100, Fergus Henderson wrote:

> After a certain point, too many comments can obscure the code.
> These comments, I think, fall into that category; they are better
> put in the CVS log message.

Yes, sorry, I didn't actually intend for these comments to stay in the
code, but rather just as a way of communication concerning whether or
not particular parts of the patch should be accepted: I'm not a regular
mercury developer, and most projects I send patches to, I expect people
to look through the patch and apply just the bits that they want to (in
which case it's useful to have relevant comments near the appropriate
code) rather than the patch being the `cvs diff' preceding `cvs commit'
as is usual on the mercury-reviews list.

As regards what should stay in the actual code, I'm inclined not
to leave any comments justifying handling negative exponents,
and re the 0.0**0 question either have no comment or, if convenient,
either a reference to an authoritative source (is it in Knuth's Art of
Programming?) or a URL to mailing list discussion.

pjm.
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