Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site turtlevax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!decwrl!turtlevax!ken From: ken@turtlevax.UUCP (Ken Turkowski) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: multidimensional arrays and using C for numerical work Message-ID: <626@turtlevax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 7-Jan-85 12:59:31 EST Article-I.D.: turtleva.626 Posted: Mon Jan 7 12:59:31 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 8-Jan-85 05:19:06 EST References: <251@harvard.ARPA> Reply-To: ken@turtlevax.UUCP (Ken Turkowski) Distribution: net Organization: CADLINC, Inc. @ Menlo Park, CA Lines: 22 In article <251@harvard.ARPA> breuel@harvard.ARPA (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: >BTW, who wants to displace FORTRAN from its dominating position in >numerical computing? And why would you want to replace it with 'C'? >'C' is not very suited to numerical applications anyhow; the automatic >promotion of float to double, and the lack of handling >of over- and underflow are some of the problems. (Flames to me -- I >love flames. Don't clutter the net with them).Numerical algorithms in C are much easier to maintain, as well as more transportable. 'C' is a language, not an implementation. The automatic promotion of float to double, as well as chars and shorts to longs on machines whose int is long, are both performance bugs that I suspect will be fixed by someone in the near future. The handling (i.e. interrupts) of overflow and underflow is an operating system problem, and has nothing to do with the C language. It should be able to be solved with a subroutine call. -- Ken Turkowski @ CADLINC, Menlo Park, CA UUCP: {amd,decwrl,nsc,spar}!turtlevax!ken ARPA: turtlevax!ken@DECWRL.ARPA