[vox-tech] C and IEEE-754

[Peter Jay Salzman]

I started to read:

   http://www.cs.princeton.edu/introcs/91float/

and came across an interesting comment:

   "Java uses a subset of the IEEE 754 binary floating point standard to
   represent floating point numbers and define the results of arithmetic
   operations. Most machines conform to this standard, although some
   languages (C, C++) do not guarantee that this is the case."

It's a poorly written paragraph, but seems to say that C and C++ don't
guarantee adherence to the IEEE 754 standard.  If this really is the case,
why don't they?

Thanks,
Pete