Abstract (Asger M. Nielsen)

We develop a formal account of digit serial number representations by describing them as strings from a language. A prefix of a string represents an interval approximating a number by enclosure. Standard On-line representations are shown to be a special case of the general digit serial representations. Matrices are introduced as representations of intervals and a finite-state transducer is used for mapping strings into intervals. Homographic and bi-homographic functions are used for representing basic arithmetic operations on digit serial numbers, and finally a digit serial representation of floating point numbers is introduced.
Last modified: March 8, 1995.
Kim Skak Larsen (kslarsen@imada.sdu.dk)