Re: Comment about IEEE floating-point rounding... (was: Setting Float Precision in Lua.c)

[Albert Chan <albertmcchan@...>]

On Jun 10, 2018, at 8:54 AM, sur-behoffski <sur_behoffski@grouse.com.au> wrote:

> I managed publish an article in the November 1997 edition of Dr. Dobb's
> Journal.  In that same edition, was an extended interview with Prof.
> William Kahan, entitled "A Conversation with William Kahan":
>        http://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/science/rpn/biblio/ddj/Website/articles/DDJ/1997/9711/9711a/9711a.htm
> 
> IMHO, the entire Kahan article is well worth reading.

I thoroughly enjoy the read, highly recommended.

Kahan excerpt from above:

"I don't feel that the architects of Java are wicked so much as premature 
to think that they can write a universal language for every man to write 
everything to run everywhere. That isn't going to happen, it's going to be
a turf war -- Bill Joy against Bill Gates. It's a lousy reason to write a 
language, to write it in order to precipitate a turf war to bring things into 
a territory more advantageous to Sun than the current situation."

I am reading another Kakan article on Java and IEEE (not yet finished).
It seems there is good reason even for sign of zero. (+/- 0.0)

IEEE people certainly know what they are doing ...

https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/JAVAhurt.pdf

p.s.
my naming of thread maybe misleading.
I was only proposing a *default* precision setting.