Re: address@hidden: IEEE floating point support for guile?]

[Gerald Jay Sussman]

I want my numerical programs to be predictable and reliable, so...

I want to know when I divide by zero!  I want to know when I overflow
or underflow!

Sometimes a NaN is the right thing, but most of the time it is not the
right thing.  Most of the time it is a signal that I have a
singularity or other bad problem that needs special attention.  But I
cannot afford to test every operation for overflow or underflow, so I
need the exceptions, so I can provide routines that decide,
intelligently, what I want to happen in each case.

And, I want the standard IEEE rounding rules in place.  I don't want
to do arithmetic with 80 bits in the chip and 64 bits in memory.  I
want the 64 bit mode unless I explicitly ask for 80 bit accumulations!