[Cfp-interest 2310] Re: History of HUGE_VAL

[Fred J. Tydeman]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2022 10:36:45 +1100 (AEDT) Damian McGuckin wrote:
>
>
>My memory, which could be wrong, reminds me that in Unix Sys5 Rel3, which
>was released in 1987,
>
>       HUGE_VAL
>
>was a macro definition for the largest positve floating point number. This corresponds to the naming used in languages 
>like Fortran and PL/1 where the term HUGE has that same meaning.
>
>This UNIX release was in distillation during the release of the very first IEEE 754 Floating Point Standard.
>
>Obviously 1987 predates any C standard, although the X3J11 committee that
>was established to create that standard was formed in 1983.
>
>At what time/date did HUGE_VAL within the C floating point model become
>aliased to an INFINITY, rather than be part of the HUGE/TINY pairing?
>Was it from the start, i.e. 1988/1989?

C89 rationale says that the committee decided to allow it to be infinity.


---
Fred J. Tydeman        Tydeman Consulting
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