Deprecate real

[Patrick Schluter via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 30 June 2017 at 10:58:50 UTC, ixid wrote:
> On Friday, 30 June 2017 at 10:49:19 UTC, Stefan Koch wrote:
>> On Friday, 30 June 2017 at 10:44:41 UTC, ixid wrote:
>>> On Friday, 30 June 2017 at 10:26:03 UTC, Nicholas Wilson 
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Friday, 30 June 2017 at 10:07:44 UTC, ixid wrote:
>>>>> Are there any reasons not to put real on the path to 
>>>>> removal? The hardware is deprecated by both Intel and AMD 
>>>>> and it seems like an unnecessary source of confusion.
>>>>
>>>> Don't forget that real is only fp80 on x86. On AArch64(?) it 
>>>> is/should be fp128 which _is_ supported, there is also 
>>>> PowerPC double double.
>>>
>>> Isn't it an objective of D to move away from such confusing 
>>> types and have defined widths?
>>
>> D does have well defined floating point types.
>> float and double.
>>
>> real is a special type for people who know what they are dong.
>> And not to be removed.
>
> In that case should it not be defined to be something other 
> than 80 bit doubles on x86?

The real type is defined as the highest precision a platform 
gives.
This is the legacy x87 format on x86 platform. If ever AMD or 
Intel introduced a 128bit SSEx format, real would be changed to 
use this hypothetical new format.