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From: ccplumb@lion.waterloo.edu (Colin Plumb)
Newsgroups: comp.theory,comp.misc,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Modulus (Re: hashing function for strings)
Message-ID: <21419@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 90 01:15:16 GMT
References: <Er$cfg@cs.psu.edu> <12099@goofy.megatest.UUCP> <98399@linus.UUCP> <E5$4$m@cs.psu.edu> <98717@linus.UUCP> <E*er-q@cs.psu.edu> <16014@haddock.ima.isc.com>
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Reply-To: ccplumb@lion.waterloo.edu (Colin Plumb)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
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In article <16014@haddock.ima.isc.com> karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
>But, given that most implementations use two's complement for integers, and
>even for floating-point exponents, why *is* sign-magnitude the standard for
>floating point significands?

Because the multiply/add ratio is much higher for floating point code,
and signed-magnitude is better for multiply at the expense of add.
-- 
	-Colin