On Apr 27 2022, Paul Eggert wrote: > Any proposal to change 'long double' to always output leading 0 or 1 needs > to deal with the fact that this'd lengthen the output string.
The real reason for not using that format is that 64 bits can be conveniently formatted without having to shift around the mantissa, and having to handle the shifted out bits specially. For IEEE quad with its 112 bits of mantissa and the hidden bit, this format is again more convenient. -- Andreas Schwab, sch...@linux-m68k.org GPG Key fingerprint = 7578 EB47 D4E5 4D69 2510 2552 DF73 E780 A9DA AEC1 "And now for something completely different."