Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!sri-unix!gwyn@Brl-Vld.ARPA From: gwyn@Brl-Vld.ARPA Newsgroups: net.physics Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C Message-ID: <2057@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Mon, 16-Jul-84 15:48:26 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.2057 Posted: Mon Jul 16 15:48:26 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 20-Jul-84 04:03:06 EDT Lines: 19 From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) Yes, C also reassociates supposedly associative operators as in a = b + (c + d); This issue is being discussed in the ANSI standardization effort. Meanwhile, one can obtain the desired associativity by breaking the computation up into substatements; admittedly not as nice as letting parentheses determine order of evaluation, but guaranteed to work. It is a bit unfair to expect C to follow Fortran rules rather than its own; if the rules should be changed then let the standards people know and maybe they will be (if possible without breaking existing code). The reason C floating arithmetic is in double precision is that the PDP-11 FP11 design made that the most reasonable way to do business. Now that C exists on practically all CPU architectures, this is not a very good reason, and it could be changed. Again, the ANSI C standards committee appears to be ready to make single- precision floating point a full family member.