Re: FLOATING-POINT CONSISTENCY, -FFLOAT-STORE, AND X86

[Toon Moene <toon at moene dot indiv dot nluug dot nl>]

> FWIW, the g77 manual has a reference (in 
> `Floating-point Errors') to a
> supplemented version but I don't remember details.  
> (Expert comments on the collection of references there 
> would be welcome.)

[ Well, I'm certainly not an expert on floating point
  arithmetic, but I'm working with them for 20 years now
  and learned the hard way to be careful ]

The `Supplement' mentioned in the docs more than covers everything I
wanted to write on this subject.

Sigh - I probably slept while you added this to the documentation ...

For those not having the g77 info stuff handy: See
http://www.validgh.com/

The reason people do not jump to this information right away might be
caused by the fact that it is titled "Floating point errors".  Those who
fall into the various traps floating point arithmetic lays out for them
invariably think of it as a "compiler error", not a "floating point
error" [not in the least because the example I showed will simply
"hang"] ;-)

Cheers,

-- 
Toon Moene (toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl)
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
Phone: +31 346 214290; Fax: +31 346 214286
g77 Support: fortran@gnu.org; egcs: egcs-bugs@cygnus.com