Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site boulder.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!hao!cires!boulder!jon From: jon@boulder.UUCP (Jon Corbet) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: ANSI C suggestions Message-ID: <228@boulder.UUCP> Date: Fri, 12-Oct-84 20:41:15 EDT Article-I.D.: boulder.228 Posted: Fri Oct 12 20:41:15 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 14-Oct-84 08:32:13 EDT Reply-To: jon@boulder.UUCP (Jon Corbet) Organization: National Center for Atmospheric Research Lines: 29 As long as we are discussing improvements to the language, I would like to suggest a couple: (1) Get rid of that requirement that all floating point arithmetic be done in floating point. Here at NCAR, we have applications that need to quickly crunch a few megabytes of data and get it to the display, while the scientist is sitting there twiddling his thumbs and wondering if the programmers should get raises after all. 32 bits is plenty of precision for our calculations, and the double precision slows things down enough that our math intensive routines are still written in (UGH!) FORTRAN. This is a drag, since I really campaigned hard for a C compiler, and I still have to use FORTRAN. I don't care if I have to set a compiler flag or whatever, as long as I can use single precision arithmetic. (2) The DEC C compiler allows a "readonly" designation on global variables. This is handy to insure that one does not overwrite static lookup tables and such. VAX type machines can easily implement readonly variables. I suggest that readonly should be part of the language in much the same way as register variables -- i.e. the compiler does not have to implement things that way if it is in a bad mood or the machine does not support it. -- Jonathan Corbet National Center for Atmospheric Research, Field Observing Facility {hplabs|seismo}!hao!boulder!jon