Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!sri-unix!gwyn@BRL-VLD.ARPA From: gwyn@BRL-VLD.ARPA Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: floats and doubles on a VAX 750 with an FPA Message-ID: <12195@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Tue, 7-Aug-84 13:41:51 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12195 Posted: Tue Aug 7 13:41:51 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 10-Aug-84 01:47:09 EDT Lines: 11 From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)(Note: I moved this response from Unix-Wizards to Info-C.) I think the ANSI C committee's decision not to REQUIRE that floats be handled in single-precision, but to encourage it when it is "natural" for the architecture, is quite proper. It is likely that market pressure will cause C compiler vendors to convert to single-precision float arithmetic when this yields faster, smaller code. Conversely, on architectures where double-precision is more natural (PDP-11?) there will be no additional penalty imposed.