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From: rs4u#@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Richard Siegel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Floating-Point Precision
Message-ID: <IUc7YAy00UhTz2w0i1@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 7-May-87 08:07:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: andrew.IUc7YAy00UhTz2w0i1
Posted: Thu May  7 08:07:40 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 9-May-87 02:47:50 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
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The MS Fortran floating-point routines handle single and double precision
real numbers -- 32 and 64 bits, in the same IEEE standard
format as SANE does. The Mac's SANE routines coerce everything to 80
bits when operating; this is why Extended variables run faster
in computations that REAL variables or Double variables -- up to
a factor of 4 for simple math.

If you use that Pascal REAL type now, you won't notice any loss of precision
if you use the Fortran math routines.

		--Rich


Richard M. Siegel
Materials Characterization Instrumentation Section
Mail Stop 231
NASA/Langley Research Center
Hampton, Virginia 23665
(804) 865-3036

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