Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!hubcap!fpst
From: fpst@hubcap.UUCP (Steve Stevenson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran versus C for numerical analysis
Message-ID: <2932@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 2 Sep 88 19:54:54 GMT
References: <344@quintus.UUCP>
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 18

From article <344@quintus.UUCP>, by ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe):
> 
> What I meant was that there is no method of saying "this grouping is
> just syntactic so that I can read the expression, mathematical laws may
> be applied".


I'm afraid that "mathematical laws" are not numerical laws.
You are not free to premute and mess with expressions because the
programmer is taking great pains to keep numerical error right where
he or she wants it.  Minimal coding and slick optimization which
produces a wrong answer for the physicist (or some )*_*&*() SDI type)
won't do you any good.
-- 
Steve Stevenson                            fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
(aka D. E. Stevenson),                     fpst@prism.clemson.csnet
Department of Computer Science,            comp.parallel
Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906 (803)656-5880.mabell