is real an 80-bit type or not?

[Anders F Björklund]

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

> That's my point.  A 128-bit float would only be 'real' as long as it's the 
> largest floating point type available.  So there'd need to be another name 
> for them -- preferably 'quad'.

I think using "quad" for quadruple precision floating point makes sense.

> I think early in D's development 'real' was called 'extended'.  There are 
> still a few vestiges (commented out stuff) in the compiler source if I 
> remember.  That was before my time with D, though, so I couldn't tell you 
> why it was changed.  'extended' does make more sense, and since 'real' is a 
> qualitative type, it should be an alias (defined by the compiler, perhaps). 

Walter didn't like the name "extended" very much:
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/10261.html

--anders