Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!lethe!yunexus!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!taumet!steve
From: steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: numerical C vs C++
Message-ID: <594@taumet.com>
Date: 8 Feb 91 16:53:26 GMT
References: <1920001@hpsad.HP.COM>
Organization: Taumetric Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 27

sdw@hpsad.HP.COM (Steve Warwick) writes:

>I just got done talking to a vendor of Digital Signal processors
>who mentioned that their company is involved with a group trying
>to define something called "numerical C" ...

>Are there members of the C++ community aware of this
>other standardization effort, and can point out how the two efforts 
>are unable to be combined... is there some fundamental weakness in the 
>ability of a C++ compiler to optimise for the DSP environment? 

Members of the ANSI C committe and of the Numerical C Extensions Group
sit on the ANSI C++ committee.  So, yes, members of the C++ community
are aware of other standards efforts.  The C++ committee has no
desire to introduce gratuitous incompatibilities with C or with
numerical requirements.

On the other hand, it does not seem appropriate for the committee to tailor
language features to the peculiarities of any one machine architecture.
A feature which works nicely with machine ABC may not be implementable
on machine DEF, and may be the reverse of a desirable construct on 
machine GHI.  And how desireable will this feature appear, which all
language implementations must support, when machine ABC is no longer
manufactured?
-- 

Steve Clamage, TauMetric Corp, steve@taumet.com