Public Comment Number PC-UK0126 ISO/IEC CD 9899 (SC22N2620) Public Comment =========================================== Date: 1998-02-25 Author: N.M Maclaren Author Affiliation: Self Postal Address: University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory, New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB3 3QG, United Kingdom E-mail Address: Telephone Number: +44 1223 334761 Fax Number: +44 1223 334679 Number of individual comments: 1 Comment 1. Category: Normative change to existing feature retaining the original intent Committee Draft subsection: 7.6 Title: Which functions can raise floating-point exceptions Detailed description: The third item of paragraph 2 is not determinable by the programmer on some architectures, and will cause serious problems. Many systems use floating-point for some integer operations or handle some integer exceptions as floating-point - e.g. dividing by zero usually raises SIGFPE, and integer multiplication or division may actually be done by converting to floating-point and back again. I suggest replacing that item by: - any function call defined in the header or defined elsewhere with a floating-point parameter or result is assumed to have the potential for raising floating-point exceptions, unless the documentation promises otherwise. This requires most of the functions in to handle exceptions themselves, if they use floating-point, but that is implied by the previous wording. It has the merit of at least being determinable, which the existing wording isn't.