"so" <s...@so.do> wrote in message news:op.videg00w7dt...@so-pc... >> Static is a little bit better in that the uses of it at least have some >> connection to the dictionary meaning of "static", even if perhaps a >> little >> distant. But there's just no way to stretch the dictionary meaning of >> "enumeration" to include manifest constants. Like everyone else, I can at >> least live with it, but I look forward to the day the linker issue is >> fixed >> so we can finally mutilate/destroy/kill it, dead, dead, dead with extreme >> prejudice in favor of immutable. It's a stain - doesn't really cause a >> problem, but boy is it ever UGLY. > > Float is not floating and double is not doubling, are they next? >
Float (short for "floating point"): The decimal point can "float" around as the value changes (not a literal use of "float", but there's nothing wrong with metaphoric uses of words, even in ordinary speech). This type is named in contrast to the fixed-point arithmetic that was often used as an old-school optimization (where the decimal point was always at a fixed location, for example, the high 16-bits may have been the whole-number part, and the low 16-bits may have been the decimal part). Double: This one's easy: It's double the size of a float.
