Xref: utzoo comp.lang.modula2:806 comp.lang.misc:1483 comp.lang.c:9536 comp.lang.pascal:832
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!vsi!friedl
From: friedl@vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Modula2's godawful IO.
Message-ID: <588@vsi.UUCP>
Date: 22 Apr 88 02:50:02 GMT
References: <764@ndsuvax.UUCP> <535@m10ux.UUCP> <730@mhuxm.UUCP> <11154@mimsy.UUCP>
Organization: V-Systems, Inc. -- Santa Ana, CA
Lines: 22
Summary: floating point

In article <11154@mimsy.UUCP>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
> It is not difficult[*] to arrange for the linker to pull in a simple
> printf() if the rest of the program does not use floating point, and a
> full-blown floating point printf if it does.  [....]
>
> [*]What, never?  Well, hardly ever.  The trick is to have the linker
> examine the undefined externals for floating-point library references,
> and if present, link with `bigprintf.obj'; otherwise it should use
> `littleprintf.obj'.  It is just a Small Matter of Programming.

This brings up an interesting question.  The C compiler on the
Onyx Z8000 (R.I.P.) would generate a symbol "_fltused" if any
floating point of any kind was used in that particular module.
When the linker went to resolve everything, it loaded in the
floating-point emulator if this symbol was found and didn't if it
wasn't.  As far as I could tell, this symbol was nothing more
than a indicator to ld(1).  Does anybody else do this?  It seems
so much more reasonable than the ubiquitous "-f" flag.

-- 
Steve Friedl       V-Systems, Inc.      Resident access(2) basher
friedl@vsi.com   {backbones}!vsi.com!friedl    attmail!vsi!friedl