Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!sumax!amc-gw!nwnexus!pilchuck!dataio!bright
From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Floating point non-exactness
Message-ID: <2646@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 15 Aug 90 18:04:13 GMT
References: <5467@quanta.eng.ohio-state.edu> <11160@alice.UUCP> <6855@ozdaltx.UUCP>
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 12

In article <6855@ozdaltx.UUCP> doug@ozdaltx.UUCP (Doug Matlock) writes:
<In article <11160@alice.UUCP>, ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) writes:
<< For example, IEEE guarantees that if I read the decimal representation
<< of a number that can be represented exactly in floating point,
<< that's what I'll get, period.  It also guarantees exact results
<< for primitive operations including addition, subtraction, multiplication,
<< division, and square root.
<What if these primitive operators generates a result that cannot be
<represented exactly in IEEE floating point notation?

IEEE enables you to specify that an exception is generated if the result
is not exact.