Source for ASCII to FLOAT

[Bob Knighten]

In article <9701 at alice.UUCP>, ark at alice (Andrew Koenig) gives a nice
discussion of some of the issues in writing a good atof.  Here I would like to
add a few references for those who want to do it.  The best overall discussion
- in the context of the IEEE standard for binary floating point arithmetic - is
Chapter 7 (Accurate Yet Economical Binary-Decimal Conversions) of

Jerome T. Connen, Contributions to a Proposed Standard for Binary
Floating-Point Arithmetic.  Ph. D. Thesis, Department of Mathematics,
University of California, Berkeley. June, 1984.

This is available from University Microfilms.  The order number is 8512788.

Also useful is Appendix D (Pascal Unit for Correctly Rounded Binary-Decimal
Conversions.)  

Other useful references:

J. T. Coonen, "An implementation guide to a proposed standard for
floating-point arithmetic," Computer, 13(1), Jan. 1980, pp 68-79

I. B. Goldberg, "27 bits are not enough for 8-digit accuracy," CACM, 10(2),
Feb. 1967, pp. 105-106

D. W. Matula, "In-and-out conversions," CACM, 11(1), Jan. 1968, pp. 47-50

E. W. Phillips, "Binary calculation," in The Origins of Digital Computers, 2nd
ed., G. Randell, ed., Springer-Verlag, 1975, p. 273