Questions about NCEG

[Henry Spencer]

In article <8846 at celit.fps.com> ps at fps.com (Patricia Shanahan) writes:
>Fortran users and implementers generally seem to take floating point types
>far more seriously than typical C users and implementers. If distinguishing
>-0.0 from 0.0 is such a good thing, why is it so expressly prohibited, not
>just in early Fortran standards, but in the draft for the next Fortran 
>standard?

Don't overlook the possibility of sheer ignorance.  Most Fortran users
work on non-IEEE machines, and for that matter most of them (in my rather
limited contacts with them) really do not understand the fine points of
floating-point arithmetic particularly well.  Don't confuse Fortran
programmers with competent numerical analysts; the latter group is a small
subset of the former.

Note, by the way, a point of confusion:  as I understand it, IEEE FP does
very specifically mandate that -0 compare equal to +0.  The distinction
between the two is significant only in unusual circumstances.
-- 
As a user I'll take speed over|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
features any day. -A.Tanenbaum| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu