Re: [Numpy-discussion] Unit test error with numpy rc3

[Travis O. <oli...@ie...>]

Ted Horst wrote:
> On Mac OS X tiger (10.4) ppc, long double has increased precision but  
> the same range as double (it really is 128 bits not 80, btw), so  
> e**1000 is inf, so this is not really an error.
>
>   

Thanks for the clarification.   Long-double is not standard across 
platforms with different platforms choosing to do different things with 
the extra bytes.    This helps explain one more platform.

> I'm not sure what is the right thing to do in the test, check for  
> overflow?  Also, finfo has never worked properly for this type.
>   
In machar.py  is the code that runs to detect all of the parameters.  I 
think the code should be moved to C as detecting precision on a 
long-double takes too long.

The overflow check is a good idea. The test should probably check for 
overflow and not try to run if it's detected.

-Travis