Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 12 Apr 2002 12:39:24 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>
To:        "Tim J. Robbins" <tim@robbins.dropbear.id.au>
Cc:        freebsd-standards@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: standards/36783
Message-ID:  <200204121639.g3CGdOZ90234@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <200204121240.g3CCe3a52899@freefall.freebsd.org>
References:  <200204121240.g3CCe3a52899@freefall.freebsd.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
<<On Fri, 12 Apr 2002 05:40:03 -0700 (PDT), "Tim J. Robbins" <tim@robbins.dropbear.id.au> said:

>  This format string for long double is the same as that used for double.
>  <machine/float.h> says #define LDBL_DIG        DBL_DIG , but it seems
>  odd to be printing out long doubles with no more precision than doubles.
 
The exact type of a `long double' differs from machine to machine.  On
IA-32 machines, it's usually 80-bit ``extended double precision''.  On
SPARCv9, it's always ``quad precision'' (which is not an
IEEE-sanctioned type, but is the obvious analogue of IEEE double with
twice as many bits in the representation).  Some other processors have
other representations.

Because of the way the IA-32 FPU is configured by default, using
extended precision generally doesn't do any good, and I think in the
current compilers a double and a long double are both implemented as
FPU doubles.  (This certainly was true at one time.)

-GAWollman


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-standards" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200204121639.g3CGdOZ90234>