Bug 3999 and 4261

[Nick Sabalausky]

"so" <so at so.do> wrote in message news:op.videg00w7dtt59 at so-pc...
>> Static is a little bit better in that the uses of it at least have some
>> connection to the dictionary meaning of "static", even if perhaps a 
>> little
>> distant. But there's just no way to stretch the dictionary meaning of
>> "enumeration" to include manifest constants. Like everyone else, I can at
>> least live with it, but I look forward to the day the linker issue is 
>> fixed
>> so we can finally mutilate/destroy/kill it, dead, dead, dead with extreme
>> prejudice in favor of immutable. It's a stain - doesn't really cause a
>> problem, but boy is it ever UGLY.
>
> Float is not floating and double is not doubling, are they next?
>

Float (short for "floating point"): The decimal point can "float" around as 
the value changes (not a literal use of "float", but there's nothing wrong 
with metaphoric uses of words, even in ordinary speech). This type is named 
in contrast to the fixed-point arithmetic that was often used as an 
old-school optimization (where the decimal point was always at a fixed 
location, for example, the high 16-bits may have been the whole-number part, 
and the low 16-bits may have been the decimal part).

Double: This one's easy: It's double the size of a float.