Re: Support of log10?

[Ed Morton]

Imagine how many such trivial things could be included in the awk 
language, most of which would be far more commonly useful than a log10 
function. The awk language is tiny and powerful because there are only 
constructs to do things that aren't easy to do with other existing 
constructs. If you want a language with a million constructs to do every 
single thing you might want to do with the resulting language bloat and 
write-only code side-effects, there is another existing tool for you - 
see Arnolds earlier post.

    Ed.

On 6/24/2021 9:01 AM, Peng Yu wrote:
> > Who said you will always get exactly 3 if you have log10?
> Because the number 1000 can be represent in float exactly, and the
> answer 3 can be represent in float exactly. Therefore, the correct
> result for log10(1000) must be exact 3 in float. Anything that
> deviated from it, no matter how small, is not exactly correct.
>
> > And why are exact powers of 10 even interesting enough to justify yet
> > another built-in function?
> I can ask the same question. Why it is justified not include it. Given
> it is trivial to include it?
>
> > After all, if you are only interested in
> > exact powers of 10, you don't need a math function at all, you simply
> > count the zero digits in the string representation of the number.
> No. 1000 is just an example that has an exact result in float. There
> can be other examples that has exact answers in float.