Question/request/bug(?) re. floating-point in dmd

[Walter Bright]

On 11/5/2013 8:19 AM, Don wrote:
> On Wednesday, 30 October 2013 at 18:28:14 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Not exactly what I meant - I mean the algorithm should be designed so that
>> extra precision does not break it.
>
> Unfortunately, that's considerably more difficult than writing an algorithm for
> a known precision.
> And it is impossible in any case where you need full machine precision (which
> applies to practically all library code, and most of my work).

I have a hard time buying this. For example, when I wrote matrix inversion code, 
more precision was always gave more accurate results.


> A compiler intrinsic, which generates no code (simply inserting a barrier for
> the optimiser) sounds like the correct approach.
>
> Coming up for a name for this operation is difficult.

float toFloatPrecision(real arg) ?