From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2006-10-01T01:31:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Integer division with / - request explanation of behavior

Paul Lutus wrote:
> Without realizing it, I had come to assume that a language's base ten
> textual representation for a double or a float would be readable by that
> same language and when reconverted (base ten -> base two) produce an exact
> copy of the original binary form, and this is true in most languages. Then
> a Perl programmer challenged me on this, saying the base ten representation
> almost never recreated the original binary number, and I tried to show that
> wasn't true. I wrote test suites in Java, C and C++ (the latter not using
> printf and scanf) and Perl, and the results were perfect in every language
> except Perl.
> 
> At this point, that observation may be more history than fact, because of
> the increasing importance of data transfers between environments.

Long ago in a galaxy far away, there were many more choices for transfer
of data from one machine to another. And someone coined the rule "The
receiver makes it right".