Why don't we switch to C like floating pointed arithmetic instead of automatic expansion to reals?

[deadalnix via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 5 August 2016 at 07:43:19 UTC, Ilya Yaroshenko wrote:
> On Friday, 5 August 2016 at 06:59:21 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 8/4/2016 11:05 PM, Fool wrote:
>>> I understand your point of view. However, there are (probably 
>>> rare) situations
>>> where one requires more control. I think that simulating 
>>> double-double precision
>>> arithmetic using Veltkamp split was mentioned as a resonable 
>>> example, earlier.
>>
>> There are cases where doing things at higher precision results 
>> in double rounding and a less accurate result. But I am pretty 
>> sure there are far fewer of those cases compared to routine 
>> computations that get a more accurate result with more 
>> precision.
>>
>> If that wasn't true, we wouldn't ever need double precision.
>
> You are wrong that there are far fewer of those cases. This is 
> naive point of view. A lot of netlib math functions require 
> exact IEEE arithmetic. Tinflex requires it. Python C backend 
> and Mir library require exact IEEE arithmetic. Atmosphere 
> package requires it, Atmosphere is used as reference code for 
> my publication in JMS, Springer. And the most important case: 
> no one top scientific laboratory will use a language without 
> exact IEEE arithmetic by default.

Most C compilers always promote float to double, so I'm not sure 
what point you are trying to make here.