The design of floating-point data types

Authors:
David Goldberg
Affiliations:
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA
Venue:
ACM Letters on Programming Languages and Systems (LOPLAS)
Year:
1992

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Abstract

The issues involved in designing the floating-point part of a programming language are discussed. Looking at the language specifications for most existing languages might suggest that this design involves only trivial issues, such as whether to have one or two types of REALs or how to name the functions that convert from INTEGER to REAL. It is shown that there are more significant semantic issues involved. After discussing the trade-offs for the major design decisions, they are illustrated by presenting the design of the floating-point part of the Modula-3 language.