Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think.com!barmar
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Lisp vs APL for numeric work (was Re: Fortran vs. C for numerical work)
Message-ID: <1990Dec20.050320.23027@Think.COM>
Date: 20 Dec 90 05:03:20 GMT
References: <13615@chaph.usc.edu> <1990Dec12.175323.8958@Think.COM> <1990Dec19.201059.16458@bernina.ethz.ch>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
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In article <1990Dec19.201059.16458@bernina.ethz.ch> mrys@bernina.UUCP (Michael Rys) writes:
>What do you mean with multiple floating point formats? IEEE and such?
>I have never seen that in an APL dialect, but I have never come across
>the situation where I could use different formats.

No, I mean multiple precisions/ranges.  Common Lisp provides a portable
interface to up to four floating point formats, referred to as short-float,
single-float, double-float, and long-float.  C supports float and double.
It's been a long time since I've used APL, but I don't recall it having a
way to specify single- vs. double-precision.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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