From owner-freebsd-bugs Fri Feb 20 20:25:54 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id UAA22686 for freebsd-bugs-outgoing; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 20:25:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from godzilla.zeta.org.au (godzilla.zeta.org.au [203.2.228.19]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA22679 for ; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 20:25:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from bde@godzilla.zeta.org.au) Received: (from bde@localhost) by godzilla.zeta.org.au (8.8.7/8.8.7) id PAA18491; Sat, 21 Feb 1998 15:21:38 +1100 Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 15:21:38 +1100 From: Bruce Evans Message-Id: <199802210421.PAA18491@godzilla.zeta.org.au> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com, neil@causality.com Subject: Re: Floating point errors Cc: bugs@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org >> I've ben trying to execute some pattern recognition software that we are >> trying to evaluate on different OS/system architectures for an acedemic >> client. Although it runs fine on NetBSD, and other unix OSs, on FreeBSD >> it dies with a floating point exception for some reason. Annoying :-) > >Yes. Bruce, our FP guru, has long felt that it's more important to be >technically correct and die rather than run incorrectly, and he fights >back vigorously every time we talk about changing the default setting >of the FPE mask. :-) Wrong. I feel that it is more useful to die rather than possibly run incorrectly. Programmers who actually understand FP exceptions can easily change the default exception mask (I changed it 3 years ago on my systems). The technical correctness of this is debatable. It prevents the math libraries from being ANSI conformant, but the math libraries have more serious ANSI conformance bugs. I don't plan to change the exception handling until the other bugs are fixed. Bruce To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message