On 8/10/2012 8:31 AM, TJB wrote:
On Thursday, 9 August 2012 at 18:35:22 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
On 8/9/2012 10:40 AM, dsimcha wrote:
I'd emphasize the following:
I'd like to add to that:
1. Proper support for 80 bit floating point types. Many compilers' libraries
have inaccurate 80 bit math functions, or don't implement 80 bit floats at
all. 80 bit floats reduce the incidence of creeping roundoff error.
How unique to D is this feature? Does this imply that things like BLAS and
LAPACK, random number generators, statistical distribution functions, and other
numerical software should be rewritten in pure D rather than calling out to
external C or Fortran codes?
I attended a talk given by a physicist a few months ago where he was using C
transcendental functions. I pointed out to him that those functions were
unreliable, producing wrong bits in a manner that suggested to me that they were
internally truncating to double precision.
He expressed astonishment and told me I must be mistaken.
What can I say? I run across this repeatedly, and that's exactly why Phobos
(with Don's help) has its own implementations, rather than simply calling the
corresponding C ones.
I encourage you to run your own tests, and draw your own conclusions.
