Gentoo Archives: gentoo-amd64

From: Barry.SCHWARTZ@×××××××××××××.org
To: gentoo-amd64@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] gcc 4.1 + CFLAGS
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 21:21:34
Message-Id: 20060609211458.GA10367@crud.crud.mn.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-amd64] gcc 4.1 + CFLAGS by "Vladimir G. Ivanovic"
1 "Vladimir G. Ivanovic" <vgivanovic@×××××××.net> skribis:
2 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#Accuracy.2C_and_misconceptions_thereof
3 > "...financial software tends not to use a binary floating-point number
4 > representation. The "decimal" data type of the C# and Java programming
5 > languages, and the IEEE 854 standard, are designed to avoid the problems
6 > of binary floating point, and make the arithmetic always behave as
7 > expected when numbers are printed in decimal."
8
9 What you really want for financial applications is fixed point
10 decimal, because you can’t throw away any digits except when
11 dividing. For hand calculators you want binary floating point with
12 guard digits.
13
14 Enough research has gone into writing code for IEEE floating point
15 that I would not try to bypass it without a good reason. It’s there to
16 be your friend.
17
18 --
19 Barry.SCHWARTZ at chemoelectric.org http://chemoelectric.org
20 Free stuff / Senpagaj varoj: http://crudfactory.com (PDF)
21 'Democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful countries.' - Bush
22 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html)

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-amd64] gcc 4.1 + CFLAGS "Vladimir G. Ivanovic" <vgivanovic@×××××××.net>