Re: "The Best Programming Language for the End of the World"

On 12/04/2025 1:42 am, mhx wrote:

This is likely to have been a factor in Intel's decision to use
80-bits internally.

 
Maybe they needed 80 bits to print a binary 64-bit float in BCD
for COBOL compilers.
However, one needs a few hundred bits to correctly represent a
binary 56-bit significand in decimal, so maybe it is only enough
for single-precision floats?

Who does that?

For sure, high-quality libraries do not rely on 80-bit extended
precision for decimal output - I remember even the MASM library
had special code for that.
...

I take no precautions limiting output to 15 and 18 digits respectively
for double and extended.  This is floating-point after all and lack of
accuracy at the limits is expected.