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From: braner@batcomputer.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C and Floating Point
Message-ID: <646@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: Thu, 9-Apr-87 17:59:17 EST
Article-I.D.: batcompu.646
Posted: Thu Apr  9 17:59:17 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Apr-87 13:50:30 EST
References: <15958@sun.uucp> <5716@brl-smoke.ARPA> <14680@cca.CCA.COM> <790@xanth.UUCP> <788@kodak.UUCP>
Reply-To: braner@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu.UUCP (braner)
Organization: Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 14
Keywords: C Fortran Floating Point Parenthases
Summary: Respect parens in FP only?!

[]

My two cents worth:  How about making parens sacred (in the order-of
evaluation sense) for FP ops, but leaving it as it is for integer ops?
Thus you allow numerical considerations in scientific programming while
also allowing compiler optimizations in other kinds of code.  Now, I
expect purists to jump on me and complain that this reduces the consistency
or orthogonality or whatever of the language.  But is it worse than the '%'
(modulo) op already being for integers only (not to mention '&', etc)?
And for me, utility comes before aesthetics.  The FP programmer is always
aware of FP numbers behaving in a special way (or should be...).  Let
the compiler writer work a bit harder here too!

- Moshe Braner