Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Need info on IEEE quad format
Message-ID: <1988Sep10.230910.6486@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <660016@hpclscu.HP.COM>
Date: Sat, 10 Sep 88 23:09:10 GMT

In article <660016@hpclscu.HP.COM> shankar@hpclscu.HP.COM (Shankar Unni) writes:
>I need some info on IEEE floating point representation limits to construct
>a <float.h> file for ANSI C. I already have the info for single and double
>floats...
>The information I need is (for quad-precision (128-bit) floats)...

Uh, *what* quad-precision floats?  If you are thinking of IEEE 754, which
is what people usually mean when they say "IEEE floating point", it defines
single and double formats, and puts some minimum requirements on an otherwise
implementation-specific "extended" format.  Extended format does not have to
be 128 bits; for example, on the Motorola floating-point chips (and, I think,
on the Intel ones too) it is 80 bits.  The current ANSI C draft gives a full
list of the values for the contents of <float.h> for IEEE floating point.
-- 
NASA is into artificial        |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
stupidity.  - Jerry Pournelle  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu