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.