Inside Macintosh: PowerPC Numerics / Part 3 - Appendixes

Appendix B - Porting Programs to PowerPC Numerics

This appendix contains information of interest to programmers who are porting programs from a non-Macintosh computer to run on a PowerPC processor-based Macintosh computer using PowerPC Numerics. If you are such a programmer and you think you are getting errors because of differences in numerics, you should read this appendix.

Porting applications to run in the PowerPC Numerics environment is easier than porting to other computers. Expressions that produce good results on other computers usually give at least as good results using PowerPC Numerics.

Note

If you are porting a program that uses SANE, read Appendix A, "SANE Versus PowerPC Numerics," instead of this appendix.

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Appendix Contents

Semantics of Arithmetic Evaluation

Mixed Formats

Floating-Point Precision

The Rules of Evaluation

The Invalid Exception