[Haskell-cafe] C's fmod in Haskell

[ok]

[Concerning the fact that fmod(x,y) = -fmod(-x,y)]
I wrote:
>> Interesting, perhaps.  Surprising, no.  fmod() is basically there for
>> the sake of sin(), cos(), and tan() (or any other periodic and
>> either symmetric or antisymmetric function).

On 25 Sep 2007, at 8:58 pm, Henning Thielemann wrote:
> Why is this particular behaviour useful in connection with  
> trigonometric functions?

Range reduction.
sin(x) = sin(fmod(x, M_TWOPI)).

Whether that is the *best* way to handle range reduction is another
matter.  (Amongst other things, there are modern algorithms that get
a result as if the range reduction had been done with an infinitely
precise pi.  I have no idea how they do that.)