Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Power proposal for ANSI C -- we already have what we need
Message-ID: <7026@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 11 Jan 88 07:59:27 GMT
References: <38384@sun.uucp> <3812@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 14

In article <3812@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>	double pow(double, double);
>...  Now users can call
>this routine with integers, floats, doubles, whatever, and it works,

No, it doesn't!  First, it evaluates to a double, which is not what
is wanted in many cases, but more importantly, it doesn't work at all
for some well-defined sets of integer operands.

However, the point about using a mapping onto a compiler intrinsic
to obtain optimization is important; this can be done for many
functions, including strcpy() etc. and many math-like functions,
depending on what the run-time code (as opposed to library)
environment will support.