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Date:      Sat, 31 May 1997 09:28:37 +0200
From:      j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
To:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG (freebsd-hackers)
Cc:        un_x@anchorage.net (Steve Howe)
Subject:   Re: bcc vs cc/gcc (float)
Message-ID:  <19970531092837.DA51579@uriah.heep.sax.de>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970530121334.389A-100000@aak.anchorage.net>; from Steve Howe on May 30, 1997 12:30:45 -0800
References:  <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970530121334.389A-100000@aak.anchorage.net>

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As Steve Howe wrote:

> i have taken a great deal of time creating this code to
> show this point - and it should compile cleanly as is
> under bcc/cc/gcc.  Borland C (4.51) can run this code
> without any loss of accuracy.  please CC me, i'm not
> subscribed.

Well, you should perhaps have posted the expected output... instead of
relying on people having a Borland C.  (Btw., ``bcc'' here usually
refers to ``Bruce's C compiler'' which can be found in the FreeBSD
ports collection, and is expected to be older than Borland's use of
the term `bcc'. ;-)

I'm not much surprised that the use of non-standard components (long
double) produces unexpected results.  You multiply a long double with
a double (result of pow()), so who tells you whether the compiler does
it by first extending the result of pow() to long double format (thus
`inventing' missing precision digits), or by first truncating the long
double (although i wouldn't expect this)?

> void main           (unsigned char argc, unsigned char **argv) {

Don't get caught in comp.lang.c with this. :)  It's an invalid
definition of main, thus the behaviour is implementation-dependant.
gcc could have exited immediately without violating the standard.

The only valid declarations of main() are:

int main(int, char **)
int main(void)

Also, your blatant use of unsigned char for everything doesn't look
right.  At least with gcc, using an unsigned char as a loop index
counter isn't doing any good and is likely to slow down your code.  It
doesn't save space at all, since (i think) %dh, %dl, and %edx are all
a single register for gcc, regardless of how many bits you're using.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)



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