[Haskell-cafe] Fractional sqrt

[Yitzchak Gale]

Henning Thielemann wrote:
> Certainly no surprise - there is already an implementation of continued
> fractions for approximation of roots and transcendent functions by Jan
> Skibinski:
>  http://darcs.haskell.org/numeric-quest/Fraction.hs

Wow, nice. Now - how was I supposed to have found that?

It has been know at least since early Knuth that continued
fractions are the best approximation to rationals (in a certain
sense).

It is too bad that Data.Ratio took the idea of "simplest fraction"
from Scheme for the approxRational function.

I wrote my own replacement using continued fractions.
Now I see that I have reinvented several wheels.

Thanks,
Yitz