Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Representation Clauses
Message-ID: <15242@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 19 Feb 91 02:33:50 GMT
References: <91045.112247KKEYTE@ESOC.BITNET> <15211@smoke.brl.mil> <91049.103447KKEYTE@ESOC.BITNET>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 16

In article <91049.103447KKEYTE@ESOC.BITNET> KKEYTE@ESOC.BITNET (Karl Keyte) writes:
>If you transfer data according to IEEE formats, there is NO
>possible ambiguity even in the representation of integers -
>a standard is defined for that.

While I agree that it would be useful if that aspect were
standardized, in practice IT WAS NOT SPECIFIED in either
ANSI/IEEE Std 754-1985 or ANSI/IEEE Std 854-1987.  Indeed,
section 1.3 of the latter specifically excludes "formats
for internal storage of floating point numbers".  I have
personally encountered variations in this across nominally
"IEEE floating-point" systems that I have dealt with.

If it is important to you that your code work truly
universally, I suggest that you consider the matter more
carefully than you appear to have done so far.