In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, you wrote:
>
>"Ronald F. Guilmette" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> >Question 1: What is the reason for FreeBSD to differ from other platforms
>> >and not follow the IEEE standard by default?
>> >(Please forgive me if this is an ignorant question.)
>>
>> No, its a Good Question, and I'd like to know the answer also.
>
>That's actually a trick question. When I researched this a few years
>ago, I found that *no* system other than NetBSD starts up in an
>IEEE-conformant mode. To wit:
>
>* iBCS2/SCO, SVR4 and FreeBSD leave exceptions unmasked.
>
>* Linux uses the Intel default control word, which sets extended
> precision mode (which is not IEEE conformant).
Well, when *I* researched it a few years ago, I seem to recall that about
2/3rds of the systems I tested at that time did in fact properly disable
all of the FP traps prior to entry into main().
I think that the commercial/proprietary systems were generally pretty good
about doing this, e.g. Solaris, IRIX, HP/UX, DG/UX, DEC/OSF/1, etc.
But I think that you are correct that SCO was one of the ones that didn't
pass the test.
Part of the problem is that the major commercial C/C++ compiler test suites
make it a point to *only* test for ANSI/ISO conformance... IEEE 754 confor-
mance is outside of their scope as far as they are concerned. The result is
that a lot of people never do any serious testing of their C/C++ compilers
for IEEE 754 conformance.
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