In article <406033ce@news.povray.org>,
 "Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:

> C and C++ have "long double".  Neither language specifies that "double"
> implies 64 bit IEEE 754 float either.  Apart from C and C++, Fortran
> supports more than 64 bit IEEE 754 floats as well.  Honestly, I am not aware
> of any other languages that really matter in the scientific computing
> community.

You still seem to be missing my point. C and C++ do not specify that 
"double" is a 64 bit IEEE 754 float. Thus, you can not rely on it being 
a 64 bit IEEE 754 float! At this point in time, it *probably* is one, 
but that's not good enough. If your file format uses 64 bit IEEE 754 
floats, you need to specifically write them in that format, or your code 
will create incompatible files or just break on a machine that uses a 
different format.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message