Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 15:41:25 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender: eliz AT is
To: Stephen L Moshier <moshier AT mediaone DOT net>
cc: Robert Hoehne <robert DOT hoehne AT gmx DOT net>, djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com,
        "K.B. Williams" <Kbwms AT aol DOT com>
Subject: Re: Bug when printing long doubles
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.05.9901190824270.16892-100000@moshier.ne.mediaone.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.990119153813.29931A-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com


On Tue, 19 Jan 1999, Stephen L Moshier wrote:

> I'm pretty sure the Intel coprocessor manual will say that is an invalid
> bit pattern, because the most significant bit of the significand is
> not set while the exponent is something other than 0 or 7fff.

Right.  As far as I could see, such numbers are called ``unnormals''.

> Try
> adding zero to it, as in the following.  The coprocessor should turn
> it into a NaN pattern.

Are you saying that you think such numbers should print as "NaN"?
If so, I'm afraid that would mislead people.

For example, passing such numbers to the `is_nan' function will return 
zero, since they don't have the special bit pattern of a NaN.