[R] Looking for greater floating-point precision

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 16 Nov 2006, Paul Smith wrote:

> For my calculations, I am needing to use more floating-point precision
> than the default one of R. Is that possible? And, if yes, how?

See package gmp (but that will be slow and cumbersome for all but simple 
calculations).

The real issue is that R already uses the maximum precision of the FPU for 
many common FPUs (but not all).  Since you have forgotten to tell us 
anything about your environment we don't know if that applies: there may 
be compiler options you can use to raise the precision.

Please do study the posting guide: we are surprisingly good at 
mind-reading, but prefer to be told exactly what you want to do with R in 
what environment and why you are 'needing' something.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595