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
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.

- Raw text -