title: how do I get infinitely small numbers (for fractals)
body: <p>I'm programming the Mandelbrotset with C++ using OpenGL, but I've run into a problem: the floats I'm sending to and calculating in my shader can only fit a certain amount of decimal places. So if I zoom in too far it just gets pixelated.</p>
  <p>I thought about creating custom array functions but I can't really figure it out.
  Is there any other way than using arrays? and if not how can I calculate stuff using arrays as if they are a single number? (e.g. arr[1,2] x arr[0,2] should give the same output as just calculating 1.2 x 0.2)</p>
  <pre><code>in vec4 gl_FragCoord;
   
  out vec4 frag_color;
  uniform float zoom;
  uniform float x;
  uniform float y;
  #define maximum_iterations 1000
  
  int mandelbrot_iterations()
  {
      float real = ((gl_FragCoord.x / 1440.0f - 0.5f) * zoom + x) * 4.0f;
      float imag = ((gl_FragCoord.y / 1440.0f - 0.5f) * zoom + y) * 4.0f;
   
      int iterations = 0;
      float const_real = real;
      float const_imag = imag;
   
      
      while (iterations &lt; maximum_iterations)
      {
          float tmp_real = real;
          real = (real * real - imag * imag) + const_real;
          imag = (2.0f * tmp_real * imag) + const_imag;
           
          float dist = real * real + imag * imag;
   
          if (dist &gt; 4.0f)
              break;
   
          ++iterations;
      }
      return iterations;
  }
  </code></pre>
  <p>^the Mandelbrot function in my fragmentshader</p>