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From: brooks@lll-crg.ARpA (Eugene D. Brooks III)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Re: Float Double Parameters
Message-ID: <1377@lll-crg.ARpA>
Date: Mon, 14-Apr-86 13:56:36 EST
Article-I.D.: lll-crg.1377
Posted: Mon Apr 14 13:56:36 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Apr-86 05:47:50 EST
References: <5216@alice.UUCP> <1700006@umn-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: brooks@lll-crg.UUCP (Eugene D. Brooks III)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore Labs, CRG Group
Lines: 11

>  As far as I know (admittedly, not far) there is no longer any
>good reason for the current schizophrenia about single/double
>precision arithmetic, other than historical precedent.  Does
>anyone know any other good reasons, such as design faults in
>the VAX FPA?
The reason for keeping the conversion in is purely historical.
Its called those old dusty decks (sorry, files).  The way that
the proposed ANSI standard deals with the problem, introduce
function prototypes, seems like a reasonable way to provide
efficiency for those who need it while at the same time not
breaking old code.