Re: [gawk-devel] MPFR thoughts

[Eric Pruitt]

On Sat, May 07, 2022 at 10:00:58PM -0400, Andrew J. Schorr wrote:
> So my question for those people who are using MPFR is: how difficult
> would it be for you to use the gawk-mpfr extension library instead?
> That seems like the cleaner way for gawk to support MPFR. It's not as
> easy to use, but it allows us to simplify core gawk and the extension
> API.

At that point, I would just use another language. The thing I like most
about AWK with MPFR support compiled in is that I don't have to change
the way I write code or concern myself with library-specific details.
Sometimes, I also need to use MPFR support with an existing script
because the calculations, for example, unexpectedly do operations with
values that have vastly different magnitudes or I'm doing something
involving currency with a script that was originally written for
something where precision wasn't important. Having MPFR support baked
into AWK means all I have to do is add an additional flag to the script
invocation.

Eric