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From: drh@notecnirp.Princeton.EDU (Dave Hanson)
Newsgroups: gnu.gcc.bug
Subject: Re: Small floating point constants are doubles?
Message-ID: <15894@princeton.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 23 Mar 89 17:13:42 GMT
Article-I.D.: princeto.15894
References: <8903221553.AA04823@marvin.moncam.uucp>
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Reply-To: drh@notecnirp.UUCP (Dave Hanson)
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Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University
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In article <8903221553.AA04823@marvin.moncam.uucp> mcvax!moncam!paul@UUNET.UU.NET (Paul Hudson) writes:
	A small floating point constant in gcc has type double.
	This can cause unwanted promotions of other objects to doubles, like
	
	float h() { float f; ... return f * 2.0; }
	
	as a trivial example. This has an "unnecessary" promotion of f to
	double, and a shortening to float again on the return. It would be nice
	if sufficiently small/imprecise constants could be of float type at
	least as an option, if not by default.

this is correct as specified in the ANSI standard;
if you want float constants, use suffix "F", e.g., 2.0F.