And Greg Lindahl writes: > I often find that floating-point data doesn't compress much, but that > ASCII representations of the same data compresses to a file smaller > than the binary one.
However, some care is necessary if you're using decimal output rather than hex. I've run into problems with the identical decimal (in ASCII) number converting to different binary numbers. The difference is only in the last bit, but that ends up being important for my uses. Sometimes the cause is an actual bug in the conversion, but most times the decimal version provided *more* than the number of decimal digits expected for the binary format. For example, some people store 20 digits rather than 17 for decimal. Different systems handle the extra digits differently. sigh. And remember that 754-1985 did *not* require correct conversion for all numbers, so some people have not provided correct conversion. (The new 754-2008 *does* require correct conversion.) But there's C99-style hex output. Makes my life much easier. And conversions are relatively fast, unlike the conversions to/from decimal. Jason _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf