[Numpy-discussion] np.longlong casts to int

[Francesc Alted]

On Feb 23, 2012, at 10:26 AM, Matthew Brett wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 4:23 AM, Francesc Alted <francesc@continuum.io> wrote:
>> On Feb 23, 2012, at 6:06 AM, Francesc Alted wrote:
>>> On Feb 23, 2012, at 5:43 AM, Nathaniel Smith wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Francesc Alted <francesc@continuum.io> wrote:
>>>>> Exactly.  I'd update this to read:
>>>>> 
>>>>> float96    96 bits.  Only available on 32-bit (i386) platforms.
>>>>> float128  128 bits.  Only available on 64-bit (AMD64) platforms.
>>>> 
>>>> Except float96 is actually 80 bits. (Usually?) Plus some padding…
>>> 
>>> Good point.  The thing is that they actually use 96 bit for storage purposes (this is due to alignment requirements).
>>> 
>>> Another quirk related with this is that MSVC automatically maps long double to 64-bit doubles:
>>> 
>>> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9cx8xs15.aspx
>>> 
>>> Not sure on why they did that (portability issues?).
>> 
>> Hmm, yet another quirk (this time in NumPy itself).  On 32-bit platforms:
>> 
>> In [16]: np.longdouble
>> Out[16]: numpy.float96
>> 
>> In [17]: np.finfo(np.longdouble).eps
>> Out[17]: 1.084202172485504434e-19
>> 
>> while on 64-bit ones:
>> 
>> In [8]: np.longdouble
>> Out[8]: numpy.float128
>> 
>> In [9]: np.finfo(np.longdouble).eps
>> Out[9]: 1.084202172485504434e-19
>> 
>> i.e. NumPy is saying that the eps (machine epsilon) is the same on both platforms, despite the fact that one uses 80-bit precision and the other 128-bit precision.  For the 80-bit, the eps should be ():
>> 
>> In [5]: 1 / 2**63.
>> Out[5]: 1.0842021724855044e-19
>> 
>> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_precision]
>> 
>> which is correctly stated by NumPy, while for 128-bit (quad precision), eps should be:
>> 
>> In [6]: 1 / 2**113.
>> Out[6]: 9.62964972193618e-35
>> 
>> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadruple-precision_floating-point_format]
>> 
>> If nobody objects, I'll file a bug about this.
> 
> There was half a proposal for renaming these guys in the interests of clarity:
> 
> http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2011-October/058820.html

Oh, my bad. thanks for pointing this out!

> I'd be happy to write this up as a NEP.

Or even better, adapt the docs to say something like:

float96    96 bits storage, 80-bit precision.  Only available on 32-bit platforms.
float128  128 bits storage, 80-bit precision.  Only available on 64-bit platforms.

-- Francesc Alted