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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: hacknews
Subject: awk goes double-precision
Message-ID: <4036@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 6-Jul-84 17:04:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.4036
Posted: Fri Jul  6 17:04:36 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Jul-84 17:04:36 EDT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 10

Awk(1) has been altered to use double-precision arithmetic throughout.
This greatly increases arithmetic precision at the cost of a substantial
space penalty for programs with big awk data structures.  Such programs
are thought to be uncommon, and the tradeoff is worth it in general.
The old single-precision awk has been retained just in case, under the
name "spawk".  [Don't complain about the name, we thought about calling
it "fawk".]
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry