(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.5355) [ukfortran] From a colleague

[Toon Moene]

On 10/28/2014 08:27 PM, Bill Long wrote:

>> Is -0 greater than, equal to or less than +0 ?
>
>
> equal to.  4.4.2.2p1.
>
> The integer type includes a zero value, which is considered to be neither negative nor positive. The value of a signed integer zero is the same as the value of an unsigned integer zero.

OK, so compiler writers had to be really careful on 1s complement 
machines (note that we are discussing the state of the art 40 years ago 
here).

When I started working at the Dutch Post Behemoth (100,000 employees), 
their Fortran machines were Sperry Univac 1100s.  The transition to a 
full Fortran 77 compiler (which I had the misfortune to be caught up in 
- between a rock and a hard place, as one part of the users wanted to 
switch as fast as possible, whereas another part needed their tried and 
true "old-fashioned religion" compiler) was a real pain in the lower behind.

BTW, this discussion reminds me that when I introduced the compile time 
flag "-ffinite-math-only" in GCC (for floating point values), to 
indicate to the compiler that one wasn't interested in the preservation 
of NANs and Infs, I forgot to include code to abort on any such values 
generated.

Funny, in the 12 years since, nobody ever asked for that ...

-- 
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon at moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
At home: http://moene.org/~toon/; weather: http://moene.org/~hirlam/
Progress of GNU Fortran: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortran#news