Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ico!ism780c!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: fortran to C converter
Message-ID: <12787@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 25 Apr 89 18:55:47 GMT
References: <10176@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET> <12247@lanl.gov> <1989Apr24.172747.993@utzoo.uucp> <8050@boring.cwi.nl>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 20

In article <8050@boring.cwi.nl> dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) writes:
>In article <1989Apr24.172747.993@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>>In article <12247@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
>>>[Cray's double is inefficient]
>>Given the pervasive nature of double in C code, sounds like Cray made a bad
>>decision (or an interim one).
>
>Given that Cray's choice predates C, this sounds a bit strange.

No, Henry's right.  Given the above information, it does appear that Cray
(here taken to mean the persons who designed the C compiler for that machine)
made a bad decision.  Assuming they have only two floating-point sizes, they
should have mapped the C type `double' to the smaller one, and used `long
double' for the less efficient type.

I also hold the opinion that K and R made some bad decisions with float and
double, some of which are fixed by ANSI C, but this doesn't contradict the
above paragraph.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint