Walter Bright wrote:
Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
Don wrote:
I have a vague recollection that this bizarre definition is for
compatibility with an ancient mistake in C. Some clown miscalculated
it, and by the time people realized, they felt it was too late to fix
it.
Then it sounds like something D should get right.
There's a problem with that - porting working C numerics code to D.
That's not a concern. The syntax is completely different, so it always
requires thought. We could perhaps define float.min_2_exp with the
correct value (by analogy with float.min_10_exp) and get rid of .min_exp.
If porting C code mechanically, you'll just import core.stdc.float_;
It contains the line:
enum DBL_MIN_EXP = double.min_exp;
which could be changed to:
enum DBL_MIN_EXP = double.min_2_exp + 1;
It's not a big deal, but it's certainly something we could fix.
