Op Thu, 12 Oct 2006, schreef ???? ???????????:
> > representable in an exact way on any IEEE standard-compliant fpu. The
>
> Of course. But the result of "format" is user-oriented. User is not supposed
> to know about negative zero, denormal numbers, negative infinity and the
> whole IEEE 754.
>
> If the user is supposed to understand that "-0.000" means "a small negative
> number", then it's ok. If the user will be terrified, it would be bad.
Grandma is not the only user of a computer. A computer is a precision
instrument, usable by scientists. Format is used to display numbers in
scientific notation.
0 means "somewhere between 0 and 2^-127".
-0 means "somewhere between -2^-127 and 0".
The difference is of scientific meaning. If there were no negative zero,
the precision around zero would be halved.
Daniël
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