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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: The disturbing myth of Eiffel portability
Date: 1996/11/25
Message-ID: <dewar.848979285@merv>#1/1
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references: <3294e64b.74799475@news2.ibm.net> <56t1m4$nis@bcrkh13.bnr.ca>
 <dewar.848444338@merv> <1996Nov20.065345.1@eisner>
 <3296011F.1ECB@lmtas.lmco.com>
organization: New York University
newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
Date: 1996-11-25T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Ken Garlington said

"And, also to be fair, many of us computer scientists who got the "equality bad"
speech in numerical methods courses were _using_ machines that were designed
before the IEEE standard. :)"

Sure, but it was still bad advice. It is true that it is harder to prove
theorems about machines with junk floating-point, but that does not make
it impossible. For example Newton_Raphson iterates to precise equality
on most floating-point models.