[vox-tech] C and IEEE-754

[Ken Bloom]

On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 03:41:02PM -0400, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> 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?

I suppose if your hardware supports something else instead of
IEEE-754, then a conforming C/C++ implementation can use the hardware,
rather than having to emulate IEEE-754.

--Ken Bloom

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