On 2026-06-10 19:21, Paul Koning wrote:
On Jun 10, 2026, at 12:33 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost> wrote: On 6/10/26 18:27, Mouse wrote:...VAX float also doesn't have subnormals.Also true, but I think we could possibly ignore that one. Just as I think the rounding differences can be ignored, except for test programs that explicitly check for those.Can you? I know there are people who care about rounding modes. Even the crazy "round to even" mode, what sort of drugs were involved in inventing that one?
I think that's something done in financial circles.But honestly, people who are into crazy specific math issues wouldn't be trying to run things on a VAX to start with. So I do not expect that anyone cares about those last few digits. But of course test software will care, and the point of getting IEEE "compatibility" would be so software works, so I guess we'd have to get that working.
Then again, it may be people care because they think they should, even though in reality it doesn't matter. If your code is sensitive to rounding it is skating far too close to the edge and either needs wider floats,or not use floats at all. ("If you don't understand your problem well enough to scale it to integers, you don't understand it well enough" -- von Neumann)
Indeed.
Johnny
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