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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!atbowler
From: atbowler@watmath.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Order of evaluation, machine floating point
Message-ID: <6481@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Mar-87 20:04:25 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.6481
Posted: Mon Mar 30 20:04:25 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 31-Mar-87 06:03:21 EST
References: <4775@brl-adm.ARPA> <7779@utzoo.UUCP> <521@cpocd2.UUCP>
Reply-To: atbowler@watmath.UUCP (Alan T. Bowler [SDG])
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 12

In article <521@cpocd2.UUCP> howard@cpocd2.UUCP (Howard A. Landman) writes:
>Unless you happen to be working on an IBM 360/370 family machine.  The
>"single precision" arithmetic is so bad that it has often been called
>"half precision".  The C insistance on double precision makes a lot of
>sense in such an environment.
>
So, for that machine, let the compiler use double precision intermediates,
or write your code using double precision.  This would not violate the
standard.  The fact that /370's have a questionable floating point
format is well known, but it does not seem a good reason to continue
requiring that other machines with better floating point representations
produce sub-optimal code.