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Re: Meeting the Scope and Purpose of P754



Michel Hack (1-914-784-7648) <hack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

  I have great admiration for people who routinely write code for
  multiple platforms, but I'm pretty sure they pay *explicit* attention
  to portability and reproducibility, and don't expect compilers to
  provide that portability without any special effort on their part.
  In the end, they too really only produce "ported" programs, though
  when a new platform shows up, they may have a reasonable expectation
  that it will work with only a few (perhaps even NO) tweaks.

We did and we do.  It isn't hard to write portable code subject to
a few (now, almost universal, except for exception handling) generic
conditions.  It was a REAL pain back in the days of unfaithful
arithmetic and systems with a bizarre approach to normalisation.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email:  nmm1@xxxxxxxxx
Tel.:  +44 1223 334761    Fax:  +44 1223 334679

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