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From: gwyn@BRL.ARPA (VLD/VMB)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re:  C Floating point arithmetic
Message-ID: <123@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 27-Nov-85 11:52:55 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.123
Posted: Wed Nov 27 11:52:55 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 29-Nov-85 21:34:47 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
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You argue that because your data is only accurate to 2 or 3
significant figures, 6 to 7 place accuracy in the computation
is sufficient.  This is often simply not true; a numerical
analyst should make the determination.  I have seen enough
computations that produced total garbage to make me believe
that the naive user should get double precision by default.

I am in favor of supporting low-precision floating point in
C, as permitted by X3J11, but let's not make it the default.