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,b228c96663d3035 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Does Ada 95 conform to the IEEE 754 floating point standard? Date: 1998/02/04 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 321993884 References: <6b8fdn$qrh17@beaker.nit.gwu.edu> X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.nyu.edu X-Trace: news.nyu.edu 886601840 11566 (None) 128.122.140.58 Organization: New York University Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-02-04T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Samir asks <> The IEEE 754 standard is a combined hardware/software standard that requires certain facilities to be available at the programming language level. Most certainly the Ada 95 RM does not require IEEE conformance, since it is designed to run on machines which do not implement reasonable hardware for this purpose. The intention is that Ada 95 compilers map to the underlying floating-point hardware, whether or not it is IEEE compliant or consistent. Even on an IEEE machine, Ada 95 will implement only a subset of the 754 (or 854 remember the update) standard. However, a big difference in Ada 95, compared to Ada 83, is that Ada 95 is "IEEE-ready", in that it is not inconsistent with the standard, whereas with Ada 83 there were some definite glitches in this respect. What you need in Ada 95 is a package that provides required features, plus some additional support from the compiler. My PhD thesis student Sam Figueroa is working on a thesis that examines the issues of IEEE compliance in high level languages, and one of the work products is a complete binding for IEEE that we intend to fully implement in GNAT. Robert Dewar