Re: Is it time to legitimise REAL*8 etc?

On Jun 27, 5:17 pm, Dan Nagle <danna...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello,

On 2008-06-27 18:52:30 -0400, glen herrmannsfeldt <g...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

Dan Nagle wrote:
(snip)

So you want to build into the language
a hardware dependency for the sake of the simplest of programs?
That strikes me as a big step backwards
for the very least gain.

OK, how about REAL*8 only means IEEE standard 64 bit binary
floating point.  If a compiler doesn't support that, then
don't support REAL*8.  (Fortran 77 compilers excepted.)

OK, now what does it mean to support 754?
Just the format, or all the exceptions,
or must support denorms, what??



Maybe new numbers for IEEE standard decimal float.

Please choose.  Is the radix to be 2 or 10?
(Or do you mean that a *new* real*<something-else>
is to reflect the radix?  BTW, Yuk!)  What older programs
are being supported now?

integer, radix=<2-36>, rangemin=<value>, rangemax=<value>, lsb=<value>
bitsize=<value>...

I want to be able to specify lots of attributes and have them done in
software if I define something non-native. Let the simple kind system
live on, but I have more challenging requirements.




The kind system is nice and general.  It isn't easy to
write algorithms so general, though.

For old programs, one has to verify what the programmer
meant by REAL*8.

Yes, so why perpetuate it?  Surely, you've just admitted
that some kind of inquiry is necessary?

--
Cheers!

Dan Nagle

.

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