[Bug c/35489] New: Inaccurate GCC documentation

["adam at irvine dot com" <gcc-bugzilla at gcc dot gnu dot org>]

I'm not sure whether this is the proper method for reporting errors in
the documentation.  However, I believe there is a serious error in the
GCC documentation that needs to be addressed.

The error is at http://gcc.gnu.org/bugs.html#nonbugs_general.  This
section refers to inherent limitations of floating-point types because
most numbers can be represented only approximately.

The problem is that this "non-bug", which is connected to problem
report #323 and has a hyperlink to it, encompasses many other problem
reports that are not accurately described by this documentation
section.  Some are due to the inherent limitations, but others are
actual bugs in which the compiler is generating incorrect instructions
(such as #12331); others are due to a particular floating-point
processor feature that can be defeated with a flag (but it could be
considered a bug that the compiler is not able to take proper advantage
of this feature); still others could marginally be considered "bugs"
because a compiler could, in theory, generate correct code although
expecting it to do so may not be reasonable.

For honesty's sake, since so many problem reports end up with users
being referred to this section, the documentation should accurately
describe the situation (including the fact that there are known bugs
which may be difficult to fix), rather than giving the false
implication that all such problems are the user's fault for doing
something ignorant.  I believe this to be a serious inaccuracy in the
documentation, and one that I think has been leaving users in an
unhelpful state of confusion.


-- 
           Summary: Inaccurate GCC documentation
           Product: gcc
           Version: unknown
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: minor
          Priority: P3
         Component: c
        AssignedTo: unassigned at gcc dot gnu dot org
        ReportedBy: adam at irvine dot com


http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=35489