Research on fractional exponents

[PaulRBerg]

Context

I wrote this circa ~2021 while researching the available implementations for the exp and exp2 functions.

I ended up going with binary fractions.

Binary Fractions

Pros

• Fast and cheap
• Neat implementation (only ~64 constants to store)

Cons

• Limits the input to maximum 170141183460469231731687303715884105727
• Uses base 2, which is different to the default base 10 used throughout the library

Decimal Fractions

Pros

• Easy to understand

Cons

• Ugly implementation (~162 constants to store)

Dichotomic Search

Pros

• Easy to understand

Cons

• Slow and expensive