Jeff Walden (2013-07-09T19:13:05.000Z)
domenic at domenicdenicola.com (2013-07-16T16:01:19.666Z)
I'm only commenting on the proposals that seem to be in the current draft, because I'm reviewing a patch that adds only those particular constants. :-) Just to be clear why I'm saying nothing about the other constants, neither to praise nor to disparage. On 03/09/2012 08:00 PM, Roger Andrews wrote: > `Number.EPSILON == 2^-52` The difference between 1 and the smallest value >1 that is representable as a floating-point number. Why pick this particular epsilon? Why not, say, 2^-1074 instead, as the difference between 0 and the next largest number? Seeing only the name I'd have guessed 2^-1074. > `Number.MAX_INTEGER == 2^53 - 1` The maximum integer value that can be stored in a number without losing precision. (OK, so technically 2^53 can be stored, but that's an anomaly.) Why discount the anomaly? Looking at SpiderMonkey's source code, we have http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?string=%3C%3C%2053 as vaguely representative of most of the places using a number like this, I think -- could be others not using the `"<< 53"` string, but that's probably a fair sample. Ignore the RNG_DSCALE one, that's a red herring. But all the others use 2^53 as the pertinent value. (The dom/bindings/PrimitiveConversions.h hits using 2^53 -1 is a bug, I'm told, due to recent spec changes.) So if this constant is to exist, and I think it's a fair constant to add, why would it not be 2^53?