Representation Clauses

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <91049.103447KKEYTE at ESOC.BITNET> KKEYTE at ESOC.BITNET (Karl Keyte) writes:
>If you transfer data according to IEEE formats, there is NO
>possible ambiguity even in the representation of integers -
>a standard is defined for that.

While I agree that it would be useful if that aspect were
standardized, in practice IT WAS NOT SPECIFIED in either
ANSI/IEEE Std 754-1985 or ANSI/IEEE Std 854-1987.  Indeed,
section 1.3 of the latter specifically excludes "formats
for internal storage of floating point numbers".  I have
personally encountered variations in this across nominally
"IEEE floating-point" systems that I have dealt with.

If it is important to you that your code work truly
universally, I suggest that you consider the matter more
carefully than you appear to have done so far.