Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

>>It is a bit weird that D has 'cent' and 'ucent' as reserved words, but not 'quadruple'.
> 
> I'd hope it'd be just "quad" :S  "quadruple" is a little lengthy. 

I think it will be "real".

--anders

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Don Clugston" <dac@nospam.com.au> wrote in message news:em43j6$7tl$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> 
>> It is a bit weird that D has 'cent' and 'ucent' as reserved words, but not 'quadruple'.
> 
> I'd hope it'd be just "quad" :S  "quadruple" is a little lengthy.

That could be trouble for 3D apps where 'quad' is commonly used as an abbreviation for 'quadrilateral'.  As in glBegin(GL_QUADS).

That said, I'm sure we could all cope.

--bb

"Anders F Björklund" <afb@algonet.se> wrote in message news:em4k50$olh$1@digitaldaemon.com...

> I think it will be "real".

Then what happens when you want an 80-bit float?  Or if, far in the future or on really exotic architectures, 128-bit floats are not the biggest type?

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

>>I think it will be "real".
> 
> Then what happens when you want an 80-bit float?  Or if, far in the future or on really exotic architectures, 128-bit floats are not the biggest type? 

But "real" is not defined as an 80-bit type...
When 256-bit floats arrive, they will be real.

I suggested using "extended" for fixed 80-bit.
And that real should be converted to an alias.

--anders

"Anders F Björklund" <afb@algonet.se> wrote in message news:em5irr$1l2o$1@digitaldaemon.com...

> But "real" is not defined as an 80-bit type...
> When 256-bit floats arrive, they will be real.

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 suggested using "extended" for fixed 80-bit.
> And that real should be converted to an alias.

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).

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

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>> "Don Clugston" <dac@nospam.com.au> wrote in message news:em43j6$7tl$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>>
>>> It is a bit weird that D has 'cent' and 'ucent' as reserved words, but not 'quadruple'.
>>
>> I'd hope it'd be just "quad" :S  "quadruple" is a little lengthy.
> 
> That could be trouble for 3D apps where 'quad' is commonly used as an abbreviation for 'quadrilateral'.  As in glBegin(GL_QUADS).
> 
> That said, I'm sure we could all cope.
> 
> --bb

My personal preference would be for the type names to explicitly contain their size:

int8, uint8, int16, uint16, int32, uint32, int64, uint64
float32, ifloat32, float64, ifloat64, float80, ifloat80

It's completely clear. No one will ever misunderstand the type sizes. And the introduction of more-precise math operations will automatically imply new names for the new types.

--benji

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).