Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!hplabs!hpcea!hpfcdc!hpldola!russ
From: russ@hpldola.HP.COM (Russell Johnston)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Arbitrary precision square root alg?
Message-ID: <11060008@hpldola.HP.COM>
Date: 10 Feb 88 17:20:57 GMT
References: <1332@gumby.cs.wisc.edu>
Organization: HP Elec. Design Div. -ColoSpgs
Lines: 10

RE: Square root to specified precision

The "divide and average" method is not elaborate, but it works.
It does no error checking (assumes x > 0).
Specify desired precions in the while loop.

   sqrt=1
   while abs(x-x/sqrt) > .0000000001
      sqrt(x/y+sqrt)/2
   end