Subject: Re: floats across the network
To: David Laight <firstname.lastname@example.org>
From: Ross Patterson <Ross.Patterson@CatchFS.Com>
Date: 08/07/2002 18:27:20
On Wednesday 07 August 2002 05:24 pm, David Laight wrote:
> I wrote code for one system that
> did arithemtic on decimal numbers (up to 10 digits) with
> a sign 'overpunch'.
Sounds like we're both former IBM mainframe programmers. :-) The same
systems had (and still have) hexadecimal floating point - the values are
M*(16^S), not M*(10^S) as in IEEE.
Of course, the latest machines in that family also have IEEE floats (thanks
to Java and the scientific Fortran community) and instructions that covert
between the two formats. Such things make a hypothetical htonf() routine
Ross A. Patterson
CatchFIRE Systems, Inc.
5885 Trinity Parkway, Suite 220
Centreville, VA 20120