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Re: decimal floating point
Ivan Godard wrote:
A
Firstly, in a hardware environment that supports both formats, how does the
application source (that is, how do you anticipate the application source
will) specify which format to use in any given host language?
That would, IMHO, depend a lot on the language. Fortran ("90" and
beyond) has a "KIND=" syntax intended to be used for such purposes. The
default for floating point would likely remain binary, users would have
to specify, either in the source code or via a compiler option otherwise.
Secondly, what is the interpretation of an operation that is applied to
mixed formats? In particular, assuming there are interformat conversion
operations in hardware, what are the promotion rules?
I would have expected this to be language specific. Some languages like
to do conversions on behalf of the user, others think it's a conceptual
error and that programmers must specify such operations. I'd be
surprised if the floating point standard took that control away from the
language designer.
--
Keith H. Bierman keith.bierman@xxxxxxx| 650-352-4432 voice+fax
Sun Microsystems Laboratories | sun internal 68207
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<speaking for myself, not Sun*> Copyright 2003