[PPL-devel] More floating point problems on the Alpha

[Joe Buck]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 09:56:30PM +0200, Abramo Bagnara wrote:
> The problem come from the fact that for astonishing reasons 1.4e-45f is
> not seen as 1.4e-45.

Why is this astonishing?  The smallest positive single-precision IEEE
floating point number is roughly 1.175494e-38.  Since user-specified
numbers are rounded to the closest representable value, 1.4e-45f is
a fancy way of typing zero.

Double-precision values have much greater dynamic range; DBL_MIN is roughly
2.225074e-308.