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From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)
Subject: Re: floating point problem
Date: 1997/03/10
Message-ID: <1997Mar10.074953.1@eisner>#1/1
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 <331ace4d.1427558395@news.mwci.net> <dewar.857535729@merv>
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In article <dewar.857974200@merv>, dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> Fergus asks
> 
> <<Is this a limitation of the gcc backend (and hence also of GNU C, GNU C++,
> GNU Fortran, etc.), or is this specific to the GNAT front-end?>>
> 
> It is a fundamental limitation, and nothing to do with the front end
> or the backend. All these compilers generate floating-point instructions
> for floating-point operations.
> 
> These will only work correctly on machines that either have hardware
> floating-point (true incidentally of essentially all currently available
> x86 chips), or software systems which provide floating-point emulation.

So can anyone give an example for the Intel-challenged regarding how
one would easily detect this float-challenged hardware at runtime in
order to issue a nastygram ?

Larry Kilgallen