Re: Range types

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> writes:
>> In fact, as I only recently found out, one of the design goals of IEEE
>> floats was specifically that they sort lexicographically and use every
>> bit pattern. So you can alwys get the "next" float by just
>> incrementing your float as an 64-bit integer. Yes that raises your
>> value by a different amount, and it's still useful.
>
> There are certainly some low-level numerical analysis situations where
> you want to get the "next" float value, but that hardly constitutes
> an argument for treating ranges of floats as discrete rather than
> continuous.  Normal users of a range datatype aren't going to be
> interested in dealing with that sort of inherently machine-specific
> behavior.

Yeah, I don't think we want to base this feature on something that
arcane.  I also have to say that I'm very skeptical of the argument
that there is only a small list of types people will want this for.  I
don't think it's going to turn out to be all that small.

...Robert