Floating point non-exactness

[Walter Bright]

In article <6855 at ozdaltx.UUCP> doug at ozdaltx.UUCP (Doug Matlock) writes:
<In article <11160 at alice.UUCP>, ark at alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) writes:
<< For example, IEEE guarantees that if I read the decimal representation
<< of a number that can be represented exactly in floating point,
<< that's what I'll get, period.  It also guarantees exact results
<< for primitive operations including addition, subtraction, multiplication,
<< division, and square root.
<What if these primitive operators generates a result that cannot be
<represented exactly in IEEE floating point notation?

IEEE enables you to specify that an exception is generated if the result
is not exact.