more on TRUE and FALSE (sorry) with JOKES
Bean Anderson
bean at putter.wpd.sgi.com
Tue Sep 18 04:54:17 AEST 1990
In article <9 at christmas.UUCP>, rtm at christmas.UUCP (Richard Minner) writes:
|>
|> This whole discussion of #defining TRUE and FALSE reminded me
|> of one of my favorite fortunes of all time:
|>
|> The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
|> constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
|> appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
|> statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
|> also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
|> -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
|>
|> I've read it a dozen times or more and it still makes me laugh.
|>
|
I too laughed at this and then, feeling charitable, realized it was
possible that the author had more insight than we have given him/her
credit.
You see, we often forget that floating point numbers are *not*
REAL numbers, in the mathematical meaning of REAL numbers; they
are, at best, a gross approximation. Therefore, while the value
of pi will never change, the representation of it can easily
change from machine to machine depending upon the degree of
accuracy available.
I kind of doubt this was the author's concern; but I had a nice
weekend, the sun was out in San Francisco, I got paid when a lot
of people in other companies are being laid off, and no
disasters were waiting for me this Monday morning.....
Bean
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