Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ll-xn!husc6!bbn!gatech!hubcap!fpst
From: fpst@hubcap.UUCP (Steve Stevenson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran versus C for numerical analysis
Message-ID: <2947@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 9 Sep 88 12:03:01 GMT
References: <976@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 21

From article <976@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>, by fouts@lemming.nas.nasa.gov.nas.nasa.gov (Marty Fouts):

> C allows you to break the expression up into subexpressions, calculate
> the subexpressions into temporary variables and then combine the temps
> into the final expression.  

Back in the Jurassic age, Knuth (I think) wrote an article which pointed
out that most expressions are very short when occuring  in assignment
statements.  I could believe the above was the reason.

But the point is --- Why in the name of science do I have to hack.  I
thought we were trying to get away from that.  What's wrong with
C recogizing that floating point arithmetic is not real arithmetic and
observing the rules.  EXAMPLE:  the easiest rip-off scheme in DP
is to pick up the fuzz from interest calculations and put it in your account.
I certainly would never try to convince the business types that that
occurs.  I rather let them figure it out.  Star Wars --- that's a
different issue.-- 
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