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Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 20:16:32 -0700
From: David Schultz <das@freebsd.org>
To: Sean Chittenden <sean@chittenden.org>
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cc: freebsd-standards@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: float values at the extreme... when did things change?
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On Wed, May 07, 2003, Sean Chittenden wrote:
> Sorry for the follow up.  gdtoa isn't GPL-ware, my bad.  As Peter
> pointed out, it's the initials of the author, not GNU.  And that said,
> it looks like gdtoa is here to stay given that it's just the updated
> version of our older strtod() routines.  I'll just use
> __FreeBSD_version > 500112 as the method for detection.  -sc

I don't know why people keep assuming the 'g' stands for GNU.  I
don't think it stands for the name of the author, either.  The
original 'dtoa' routine provided IEEE 754 double conversions,
whereas 'gdtoa' is a generic routine that operates on many
different floating point formats.  (The algorithms are basically
the same, albeit less efficient.)  Thus, the 'g' probably stands
for ``generalized''.