Moving on to fractions, when I heard that raku was going to deal with fractions in a clever way, I decided to experiment and write my own module to do fractions. Instead of adulting tonight, I decided to spend a little time fiddling with code.

Here's my test script:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

#  OK, try the division of the large numbers using my
#  Number::MyFraction module. No idea what result I'll get.

use lib '../Number-MyFractions/lib';

use Number::MyFraction;

{
    my $long_tenth =
      Number::MyFraction->new( 3602879701896397, 36028797018963968 );

    my $short_tenth = Number::MyFraction->new( 1, 10 );

    my $difference = $long_tenth - $short_tenth;

    print "Compare long tenth: "
      . ( $long_tenth->decimal_val == .1 ? 'TRUE' : 'FALSE' ) . "\n";
    print "Compare short tenth: "
      . ( $short_tenth->decimal_val == .1 ? 'TRUE' : 'FALSE' ) . "\n";

    print "The different is " . $difference->decimal_val . ".\n";
}
[download]

Interestingly, it produced OK results ..

$ perl 11137153.pl
Compare long tenth: TRUE
Compare short tenth: TRUE
The different is 5.55111512312578e-18.
$
[download]

Sure, the difference between the values is non-zero, but comparing the individual fractions to one tenth did work.

I think it just depends on which tool you use to get the job done.