[RFC] We need an ENTIER that does ceil, CENTIER?

[Jose E. Marchesi]

> Maybe a typo for ENTIRE?   8-)

:)

> IIRC the word was inherited from Algol 60 so perhaps oe should look there.
>
> My vote for the new operator would be CEIL (the syk is the limit 8-)
> with CEILING second choice.

Yes, adding both CEIL and FLOOR (as synonym for ENTIER) to the extended
standard might be the best way to go at this point..

>
> Paul
>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 10 May 2026 21:25:31 -0700
>> From: chris hermansen <clhermansen@gmail.com>
>> To: "Jose E. Marchesi" <jemarch@gnu.org>
>> Cc: algol68@gcc.gnu.org
>> Subject: Re: [RFC] We need an ENTIER that does ceil, CENTIER?
>> Message-ID:
>> 	<CACc2_6-t-Hk6tu97G_tO4bXe+mikWyTCXH7u6y7ogb0e_TmEGg@mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Jose and everyone
>>
>> On Sat, May 9, 2026 at 4:15?AM Jose E. Marchesi <jemarch@gnu.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello people!
>>>
>>> Bruno Haible pointed out recently, "if you are using floor() with IEEE
>>> floating point, you most certainly will need ceil() as well".
>>>
>>> Thing is, we have the ENTIER standard operator in Algol 68, that does
>>> floor().
>>>
>>> We need to come out with some name for a similar operator that does
>>> ceil().  Something like CENTIER?
>>>
>>> Ideas?
>>>
>>> PS: Bruno's theory on why ceil() wasn't a thing back then is that they
>>>      used a FP representation that didn't include minus zero.
>>>
>> Just to be slightly pedantic here, the use of the word "entier" in French
>> is - IIRC - equivalent to the English "whole number".  So we can speak of:
>>
>> Le plus grand entier inf?rieur ou ?gal ? un r?el.
>>
>> Le plus petit entier sup?rieur ou ?gal ? un r?el.
>>
>> It seems to me that the choice of ENTIER was not a good one; nothing to do
>> with it being a French word - perhaps INF as an abbreviation for "entier
>> inf?rieur" would have been better, and then we could have had SUP as an
>> abbreviation for "entier sup?rieur".  Or we could make FLOOR a synonym for
>> ENTIER and add CEILING?
>>
>> I don't know what anyone else thinks, but I cannot come up with a plausible
>> explanation of why this one obviously French word ended up being used as
>> the name for an operator in Algol 68.  Though I suppose someone could argue
>> that ABS is an abbreviation for "valeur ABSolue", REPR is an abbreviation
>> for REPR?sentation, SIGN is an abbreviation for SIGNe, MOD is an
>> abbreviation for MODule, maybe a few others?
>>
>> But pretty clearly ODD is not an abbreviation for "impair", OVER is not an
>> abbreviation for "sur", SHORTEN is not an abbreviation for "abr?ger"...