[MOBY-dev] [moby] Re: Suggestion for new tag in Parameter(Secondary Input specification)

[Paul Gordon]

The main problem:

If somebody specifies a float, can I legally submit a e-value cutoff 
like "1.0e-180" (i.e. are we going to assume bit capacity, such as 
2^-149 for 16-byte IEEE floating point, or are we supporting arbitrary 
precision)? Underflow and overflow can cause problems on many 
systems...  same thing for integers > 2^32...

Actually, do we support scientific notation?  That isn't mentioned either.

Cheers,
Paul

P.S. Yes, you are right Pieter.  You could enumerate integers, or even 
floats for that matter: this distinction matters for a server with 
strong types, but not for the client.  I've been too client centric 
lately :-)

>On Mon, 2006-02-27 at 23:44 +0100, Pieter Neerincx wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Hmmm I use enum for some integers as well. I think it's perfectly  
>>normal to say for example: enum [1,2,4,8].
>>    
>>
>
>Perhaps Paul can clarify what problem he is trying to solve.  My
>instincts tell me that maybe he is having difficulty with casting un-
>typed XML blocks as either Integer or String, as appropriate... is that
>a correct interpretation of the problem Paul?  
>
>I think the combination of the <datatype> block and the <enum> block
>should be able to indicate whether the ENUM is of type String or of type
>Integer (or Float, or whatever).  Is that not sufficient?  Or am I
>misunderstanding what the root of the problem is?
>
>M
>
>
>
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