is real an 80-bit type or not?

[Don Clugston]

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> 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

Thanks for that link. It explains a lot -- the fact that someone 
immediately started flaming Walter is quite unfortunate. No-one 
mentioned that "imaginary real" is a horrible oxymoron.

(IMHO, they should have been "real", "imaginary" and "complex" rather 
than real, ireal, creal).