Generic get_d_2exp failures

[Marc Glisse]

Hello,

the generic path in mpn_get_d sometimes rounds the result away from 0, 
while mpz_get_d_2exp relies on a rounding towards 0 to deduce the exponent 
from MPN_SIZEINBASE_2EXP. Various ways forward I can think of:

1) work around in mpz_get_d_2exp: if mpn_get_d returns 1 or -1, divide 
that number by 2 and increase the exponent by 1. That doesn't give the 
same rounding as with IEEE, but at least the output is in the 
documented range [.5,1). (mpf has a similar issue IIRC)

2) The rounding occurs in the addition in

       weight = 1/MP_BASE_AS_DOUBLE;
       d = up[size - 1];
       for (i = size - 2; i >= 0; i--)
         {
           d += up[i] * weight;
           weight /= MP_BASE_AS_DOUBLE;
           if (weight == 0)
             break;
         }

we could make that code uglier to make sure there is no rounding up, 
maybe comparing d+up[i]*weight to d+oldweight, and trying again by zeroing 
out an increasing number of low bits of up[i].

3) Drop the generic path. It hasn't passed the testsuite for a long time, 
can't be that important.

Side note: I have seen code that uses MPFR for the sole purpose of 
converting GMP types to double (with a controlled rounding).

-- 
Marc Glisse