Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!george
From: george@cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.encore
Subject: Compiler bug or insuficient language definition ?
Message-ID: <50537@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 89 13:17:06 GMT
Sender: george@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Lines: 24

One of our grad students is trying to write some routines to do generic
parameter passing (i.e. give it the address of a variable, the size
and let bcopy store/fetch the value).  In the process of doing this
we came across some interesting behavior with floating point variables
on the Multimax.  The following piece of code

main()
{
  float f = 4.0;

  printf("float = %f\n", f);
  printf("float = %x\n", f);
}

on a sun and a pyramid will print both the floating point value (4.0) and 
then the raw hex value showing how the floating point number is stored.
On the Multimax the second value is reported as 0.  Is this (a) a compiler
bug (b) a fuzzy area in the definition of C (c) other ?

Thanks,
---George Jones
OSU Computer & Inf. Science 2036 Neil Ave.,Columbus,Ohio 43210. 614-292-7325
george@cis.ohio-state.edu or ...!osu-cis!george
Wishing you joy as you celebrate Christmas !