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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!gatech!seismo!umcp-cs!cvl!umd5!zben
From: zben@umd5.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: C Floating point arithmetic
Message-ID: <793@umd5.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 25-Nov-85 07:04:42 EST
Article-I.D.: umd5.793
Posted: Mon Nov 25 07:04:42 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Nov-85 05:23:03 EST
References: <706@lasspvax.UUCP> <4614@alice.UUCP>
Reply-To: zben@umd5.UUCP (Ben Cranston)
Organization: U of Md, CSC, College Park, Md
Lines: 32
Summary: Then the definition of 'float' is wrong...

In article <4614@alice.UUCP> ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig) writes:

These comments by garry wiegand:   [z]

>> In an inauspicious moment, K&R specified "All floating-point arithmetic
>> in C is done in double precision" (pg 41).
>>	1) floats, as opposed to doubles, are costly and useless (except 
>>	   when memory space is critical), and
>>	2) I have to advise people with CPU-intense problems not to use C.
>> Comments? Does everybody agree?
 
Andrew replies:    [z]

>No -- on most machines, single-precision does not offer enough significance
>for serious number-crunching, so people tend to use double-precision
>anyway if they care about the results.

Now, this is a most disingenious argument.  If this were really true, one
would map 'float' to the double-precision operations and totally ignore the
single-precision ones.

Let's face it - this, as well as several other "features" of the Unix system
(such as the treatment of parameters passed to functions) is left over from
the PDP-11 days, and puts the lie to Unix's claim of machine independance...

Well, perhaps that's too strong.  A better statement is that like every other
claim made by Unix, the claim of machine independance is only about 90% true.

Don't get sore!  90% is pretty damn good given the level of snake oil in 
this field...
-- 
Ben Cranston  ...{seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben  zben@umd2.ARPA