Re: [tlug] Internal floating point formats used by 80387, IEEE 754 and C . . . . .

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Botond" == Botond Botyanszki <tlug@example.com> writes:

    Botond> Theoretically I agree with you. In practice it would be
    Botond> unlikely as wikipedia and even the glibc manual[1] says:
    Botond> "Modern computers implement the IEEE 754 standard for
    Botond> numerical computations"

Which says nothing.  Only citing the standard itself is really
meaningful at this point.  As I understand it, IEEE 754 is a standard
that specifies what happens *inside* the FPU, and a couple of
interchange formats.  However, those interchange formats are not
mandated by the standard, and there are in fact several of them (eg,
there's no guarantee that an IEEE 754 double is in base2, 2s
complement, or even that the range of the exponent is symmetric around
zero IIRC).

That said, I don't have a copy.  My point is simply that I have reason
to doubt, and if I really cared I'd either experiment as Jim proposes
or get hold of the standard.

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