Re: numeric precision when raising one numeric to

Scott Marlowe wrote:
> I could be wrong, and would be unoffended to be proven so, but I don't
> think I am. I think that argument is just hand waving.
>
> 2: How many people who DO work with large exponents and need arbitrary
> precision have looked at postgresql, typed in "select 3^100" got back
> 5.15377520732011e+47, and simply went to another piece of software and
> never looked back? We don't know. And the attitude that it seems
> useless to me so it must be useless to everybody else isn't going to
> help attract people who do things that seem esoteric and strange to you,
> but are important to them.
>
> 3: Is this worth submitting a patch for? I don't want to spend x hours
> making a patch and 10x hours arguing over getting it accepted... :)

Seems we could create a NUMERIC^NUMERIC function that does integral
exponents accurately and non-integrals using floats. Is the problem
that the function can only return NUMERIC or float?

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