Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Playing with the bits of floats
Message-ID: <9473@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 21 Jan 89 22:08:48 GMT
References: <1100@l.cc.purdue.edu> <5586@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <284@bgalli.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 12

In article <284@bgalli.UUCP> bga@bgalli.UUCP (Billy G. Allie) writes:
>You are right, C is not the 'One True Programming ...'.  BUT - it does let
>me get ``under the hood'' and play `dirty' (I question the use of the word
>"dirty") tricks.  This is the reason I started using C and it is the reason
>I will continue to use C.

C is good for that, but experience has shown that the vast majority
of the time, portable C coding practice suffices, and it has the
benefit of reducing the amount of work over the long run.  Necessary
non-portabilities can virtually always be isolated in a small section
of code, with the rest system-independent.  Unnecessary non-portabilities
are best avoided altogether.