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Re: floating point war casualty list
- From: Toon Moene <toon at moene dot indiv dot nluug dot nl>
- To: Stephen L Moshier <steve at moshier dot net>
- Cc: Robert Dewar <dewar at gnat dot com>, gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org, law at redhat dot com
- Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 21:01:44 +0200
- Subject: Re: floating point war casualty list
- Organization: Moene Computational Physics, Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
- References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0206050831340.26931-100000@moshier.net>
Stephen L Moshier wrote:
> I will eventually remember the bug-compatiblity reasons why the DEC
> format is done the way it is, but there is no telling how long it will
> take to find out why some of those other format conversions are done
> the way they are.
If this implies you once knew it, the question arises why you didn't
document it (e.g., by including comments in the code). This would have
warned people who wanted to "clean it up".
> It is just not a wise move to disturb this stuff,
> because it will take a very long time for the dust to settle down.
> The most generous explanation offered for the recent changes is that
> somebody was on a cosmetic cleanup campaign. It would be far better
> to let it be, leave it ugly.
Well, that means that we now have another part of GCC that's not really
free software (the other one is reload{1}.c), because it can't be
modified.
This is not the road we should go down.
--
Toon Moene - mailto:toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl - phoneto: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
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