Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!lti.UUCP!reg
From: reg@lti.UUCP (Rick Genter x18)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: float vs. double
Message-ID: <8808092015.AA26033@pepperell.lti.com>
Date: 9 Aug 88 20:15:23 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 9

I understand that dpANS C requires that sizeof (float) <= sizeof (double).
However, does it state anywhere that a double should provide greater *precision*
than a float, or for that matter that casting a float to a double (or vice versa)
shouldn't raise a hardware exception?  I can envision a situation where
sizeof (float) == sizeof (double), the difference being that floats trade off
mantissa bits for exponent bits.  I believe the VAX architecture provides
this.

                                        - reg