s-news
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: displaying large numbers

To: "Fowler, Mark" <FowlerM@mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca>
Subject: Re: displaying large numbers
From: <ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 20:16:37 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: "S-news (E-mail)" <s-news@wubios.wustl.edu>
In-reply-to: <1A4AC4BAB9C50A42854582B69B08C03411C745@MSGMARBIO05>
Doubles on most platforms are only represented to 53bits, that is just
under 16 decimal digits.  So S cannot store that number exactly.

Your methods are doing particularly badly here.  On Linux I get
> print(v, digits=18)
[1] 473482475476472448

and on Windows
> print(v, digits=18)
[1] 473482475476472450

which is consistent with a number about 50x the maximum which can be
represented exactly.

On Wed, 27 Nov 2002, Fowler, Mark wrote:

> I wish to display large numbers without scientific notation. I've tried
> various combinations of print and format without success. As an example,
>
> > v_473482475476472478
> > v
> [1] 4.7348e+017
> > print(format(v,digits=36,scientific=F))
> [1] "473482475476473000"
> > print(format(v,digits=36,scientific=c(-24,24)))
> [1] "473482475476473000"
> > as.character(format(v,digits=18,scientific=F))
> [1] "473482475476473000"
>
> Anyone know how to make the original number display?
>
> [S-Plus 6.1 on Windows 98]
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> This message was distributed by s-news@lists.biostat.wustl.edu.  To
> unsubscribe send e-mail to s-news-request@lists.biostat.wustl.edu with
> the BODY of the message:  unsubscribe s-news
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>