1Because of frequent questions ....... here is the BC FAQ 2 3 41) Why does BC have its own arbitrary precision number routines 5 (found in lib/number.c) rather than using GMP? 6 7GMP has "integers" (no digits after a decimal), "rational numbers" 8(stored as 2 integers) and "floats". None of these will correctly 9represent a POSIX BC number. Floats are the closest, but will not 10behave correctly for many computations. For example, BC numbers have 11a "scale" that represent the number of digits to represent after the 12decimal point. The multiplying two of these numbers requires one to 13calculate an exact number of digits after the decimal point regardless 14of the number of digits in the integer part. GMP floats have a 15"fixed, but arbitrary" mantissa and so multiplying two floats will end 16up dropping digits BC must calculate. 17 18