Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997 17:01:47 +0930 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: "Russell L. Carter" <rcarter@consys.com> Cc: gjohnson@nola.srrc.usda.gov, tlambert@primenet.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Floating point exceptions Message-ID: <199710110731.RAA00733@word.smith.net.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 10 Oct 1997 18:46:05 MST." <199710110146.SAA08283@dnstoo.consys.com>
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> |> FreeBSD (so I can replace Linux). My understanding is that FreeBSD traps > |> FPE's. Is there a way for me to change the FreeBSD source code to mask FPE's > |> rather than trap them? Better yet, can I do that for a specific application at > |> compile time? Your assistance is greatly appreciated. > | > |Fix: Correct the code to not generate exceptions > > Hmm, I don't think so. There are a variety of reasons that NA people > want to use those carefully thought out exceptions. Find > 'em yerself. In the original case the NA people weren't using the exceptions; they were ignoring them. IMHO FreeBSD does the correct thing; it notifies you of the exception. It is your responsibility to decide what to do about it. I have spent not a little time carefully explaining to various scientific programmers about arithmetic exceptions and why they should care about them, and so far have had a 100% conversion rate. If you look a physicist in the eye and say "unquantifiable error", they will usually listen. mike
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