Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!wuarchive!udel!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: passing floats in inet socket-based IPC
Message-ID: <14620@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 30 Nov 90 10:46:14 GMT
References: <1990Nov26.164122.6152@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> <1990Nov29.224651.26522@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 11

In article <1990Nov29.224651.26522@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <1990Nov26.164122.6152@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> luj@delta.ecn.purdue.edu (Jun Lu) writes:
>>Is there a quick/neat way to passing floats in inet socket-based IPC, just
>>like we "routinely" do for passing ints on "popular" architectures( with
>>just some hton or ntoh conversions) ?
>In a word, no.  There is too much diversity in floating-point formats to
>admit of any graceful general solution that's also quick and simple.

What I do is to split the float into integral exponent and significand,
using the UNIX library functions that support that (frexp et al.).
There are some details to be considered but that's the essence.