In article <cjameshuff-FC8E81.10072721032004@news.povray.org> , Christopher
James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>  wrote:

>> Christopher James Huff wrote:
>> > Because it's harder to read and write binary data in a portable way.
>>
>> No it's not.
>
> Hmm...yes it is. To write "1.5" in a portable way in text only requires
> writing those three characters. In binary you need to write it byte by
> byte in a known floating point format and byte ordering, regardless of
> what the native machine format is.

This is simply not correct.  You can perfectly represent a floating-point
number with two integers.  In fact, a floating-point number is exactly that!
Consequently, representing it as text gains you nothing except the false
impression that you can get an exact value representation.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

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