warnock@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (ARCHIE WARNOCK) (02/13/91)
Hang on a second here. Let's get something straight. The issue I raised has nothing to do with whether to use commas or decimals to denote floating point numbers. The proposed standard uses neither (alone). The challenge I proposed was to find _one_ non-Forth book (English or not) in which embedding a decimal point in a number implied it was double precision integer (and 1.000 = 10^3 is cheating because then you have to allow for 1.000.000 = 10^6). Frankly, I don't care whether the character is "." or "," - as long as it is the same character as used by formatted ASCII - or even EBCDIC. The essential point is not to make Forth look like any other computer language. The point is to make Forth able to handle ASCII data. For gosh sakes, people! ASCII is already adopted as the character set for the standard interchange of data. I _have_ to be able to read that data. Make no mistake about it - Forth still has to interchange data with the rest of the world. I'm going to restate the obvious here. The question is _NOT_ what character is used elsewhere to indicate the position of a decimal point. The question is what character is used by Forth to indicate a double precision integer. The use of the character "." conflicts with its use in standard practice elsewhere. Is there an ANSI specification for ASCII data representations? Is it legitimate for ANSI Forth to contradict it? Do I expect my little objections to carry any influence with the committee? Of course not. They've shown repeatedly there's no interest in what the rest of the (non-Forth) world does. Will there still be little niches for Forth even if the standard treats floating-point numbers incorrectly? Of course there will. But encoding blatant errors in the standard won't go very far towards making the language respectable to the managers who'll eventually make these language specifications. Sigh... The "oldtimers" here know I've used Forth for a long time, and have long advocated its utility for applications beyond the usual instrument control programs. But this is just wrong, and not worth the struggle. I'm sticking with TurboC from here on out...
esj@harvee.UUCP (Eric S Johansson) (02/15/91)
In article <4313@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> warnock@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (ARCHIE WARNOCK) writes: > Frankly, I don't care whether the character is "." or "," - as long as > it is the same character as used by formatted ASCII - or even EBCDIC. > The essential point is not to make Forth look like any other computer > language. The point is to make Forth able to handle ASCII data. For > gosh sakes, people! ASCII is already adopted as the character set for > the standard interchange of data. I _have_ to be able to read that > data. Make no mistake about it - Forth still has to interchange data > with the rest of the world. > > I'm going to restate the obvious here. The question is _NOT_ what > character is used elsewhere to indicate the position of a decimal point. > The question is what character is used by Forth to indicate a double > precision integer. The use of the character "." conflicts with its use > in standard practice elsewhere. Is there an ANSI specification for > ASCII data representations? Is it legitimate for ANSI Forth to > contradict it? Correct me if I am wrong but I believe the US uses 1,000.00 to represent one thousand while in europe they use 1.000,00 for the same value. -- ... ^^^ eric johansson UUCP ...!uunet!wang!harvee!esj esj@harvee.uucp * * a juggling fool AT&T (617) 577-4068 (w) o HAM ka1eec \_/ CSNET johansson%hydra@polaroid.com or hydra!johansson@polaroid.com source of the public's fear of the unknown since 1956
uh@informatik.uni-kiel.dbp.de (Ulrich Hoffmann) (02/19/91)
In <6867570@harvee.UUCP> esj@harvee.UUCP (Eric S Johansson) writes: >Correct me if I am wrong but I believe the US uses 1,000.00 to represent one >thousand while in europe they use 1.000,00 for the same value. Right! In german the decimal point is a "Dezimal-Komma". That's one of the first things our kids in Germany have to learn about numbers in english. (The other one is the billion, which is "Milliarde"=10^9, in contrast to "Billion"=10^12 in german :-) Ulrich Hoffmann ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet Kiel, Institut fuer Informatik Preusserstr. 1 - 9 , D - 2300 Kiel 1 Telefon: ++49-431-5604-59 , Telefax: ++49-431-566143 EMail: uh@majestix.informatik.uni-kiel.dbp.de ----------------------------------------------------------------------