Re: Why are mpfr, mpc and gmp needed for gcc?

[David Daney <david dot daney at cavium dot com>]

On 04/02/2012 09:11 AM, René Nyffenegger wrote:
> I hope this is the right place to ask this question. I only
> recently tried to compile gcc and it is obviously dependant
> on mpfr, mpc and gmp. These seem to be high precision
> mathematical libraries. Now, I am wondering why a compiler
> not only needs one of these but even three of them.

While optimizing code, GCC can simplify some floating point expressions. 
 It uses these libraries to carry out the arithmetic associated with 
these optimizations.

For example, things like:

	x = 2.3 + 1.3;

Could be simplified to:

	x = 3.6;


David Daney