HC_FAQ

Last modification : 2010/01/16 21:22

HoubySoft Calculator FAQ

Welcome to the list of questions you might have about hc.
If you have a question that you think belongs here, feel free to email it to me (even if you don't have an answer for it :]).

* Why does hc say that -2^2 is 4?

This is not a bug; it was introduced by design, because if you'd want -2^2 to give 4, it would imply that you would first treat 2^2, and then do the "-", therefore you would do -(2^2). If this was the behavior of HC, it would be very unpleasant to input negative complex numbers (on the real axis); imagine you wanted to input (-2 + 3i) - you couldn't type -2i3, because then HC would think you mean -(2i3), and thus, -2i-3. However, with this little modification of math predecedence, you can type -2i3 and get what you expect - (-2 + 3i). (To get (-2 + -3i), you'd type -2i-3, by the way.)

* Why are very large results imprecise if in non-scientific mode? Is it a bug?

No, it's not a bug. This happens because internally, the number is represented in scientific mode, up to AT LEAST the precision you set with the \p command. Therefore, if these numbers are converted to normal notation, some of the digits will be unknown and therefore replaced by zeros. To fix this, you can simply set a larger precision with the \p command.

* Why don't the 'Help' menu items in the Windows GUI version do anything?

This has been fixed as of version 0.7, please redownload the setup and reinstall the application to solve the problem.