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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: ANS TC Magnet for Division
Message-ID: <1660.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 3 Sep 90 04:08:19 GMT
Organization: String, Scotch tape, and Paperclips.  (in Pgh, PA)
Lines: 27

Category 10,  Topic 17
Message 75        Fri Aug 31, 1990
D.RUFFER [Dennis]            at 13:32 EDT
 
From Elizabeth Rather, Chair, ANS X3J14 Technical Committee:

This is addressed to those who have been commenting extensively on our work on
UseNet and related boards.

Although Mitch Bradley has been doing a great job of answering your specific
comments (thanks, Mitch!), I do have a couple of personal (unofficial) remarks
on recently popular topics.

1. Division:  Somehow, all other high-level languages, even ADA, seem to get
along without specifying how division works.  Why do Forth programmers require
a level of specification unique in the industry?  There was a firestorm of
discussion over the recent revisions to ANS Fortran, and no one ever
complained that Fortran makes no specification as to the rounding of integer
division with negative arguments!  The fact that ANS Forth will support both
of the two most popular algorithms (symmetric flooring is more attractive to
the mathematically sophisticated, and truncation is the way most hardware DIV
instructions work) provides options you can't get any other way than writing
your own in assembler.  People who know the difference should be overjoyed,
and people who don't shouldn't care.  I don't understand why everyone's mad.
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