Status of floating point arithmetic in Java?

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Robert Dodier - 31 Jul 2007 16:26 GMT

Hello,

Several years ago William Kahan, well-known in numerical analysis,
criticized Java's rules for floating point operations.
e.g. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/JAVAhurt.pdf

What is the status of Java's (as expressed in Java 1.5 or 1.6)
rules for floating point operations? Have the rules been adjusted
since the original spec to address Kahan's remarks,
or for any other reason?

Thanks a lot for any light you can shed on this question.

Robert Dodier

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Twisted - 31 Jul 2007 18:50 GMT

> What is the status of Java's (as expressed in Java 1.5 or 1.6)
> rules for floating point operations? Have the rules been adjusted
> since the original spec to address Kahan's remarks,
> or for any other reason?

You might want to look into "strictfp".

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