From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,70016ed51014902d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: fjh@murlibobo.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) Subject: Re: IEEE fp & Java Date: 1996/12/09 Message-ID: <58h0kc$mdm@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 203130372 references: <01bbdcb5$7500ab30$24af1486@pc-phw> organization: Comp Sci, University of Melbourne newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-12-09T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Robert Dewar wrote: > Now, it is certainly trivially easy when designing a language to make a > statement that FPT will be exactly IEEE 754, and then congratulate > yourself for doing such a splendid job of portability design, but if > what you have achieved is a design that does not run correctly on the > machines that people think of as being appropriate for high end fpt > calculations (Sun is not a big player in this market), then perhaps you > have not done such a great job after all. Java implementations that do not conform to the Java language specification are already starting to appear. One was announced recently in comp.compilers... amoung other reasons for its non- conformance is the fact that it doesn't handle IEEE infinities or NaN. It will be interesting to see how much the market values conformance to spec versus how much it values ease of implementation (which translates into lower cost) or efficiency. The Ada market has placed a very high value on conformance to the standard (and in particular on validation). Whether the Java market will do so remains to be seen. -- Fergus Henderson | "I have always known that the pursuit WWW: | of excellence is a lethal habit" PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp.