From: Ryan Blazecka Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: doubles vs. floats Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 19:03:46 -0800 Organization: BCTEL Advanced Communications Lines: 14 Message-ID: <32F00F92.1662@bc.sympatico.ca> References: <199701292356 DOT SAA28049 AT delorie DOT com> Reply-To: eblazecka AT bc DOT sympatico DOT ca NNTP-Posting-Host: nwmr01m02-27.bctel.ca Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp DJ Delorie wrote: > > > On PC with FPU, all float calculations are done in double precision, so > > when you do something on a float, your machine will sometimes : > > No, on ALL pcs (FPU or Emulator), all float calculations are done as > "long double" (80-bit native 387 format), so both floats and doubles > get converted. > > However, many floats will get promoted to double to be passed as an > argument to a function (printf) and most math functions return double, > so using floats will result in extra conversions in those cases. So then (disregarding calling the math functions, printf, etc), using long doubles would be even faster, right?