[PD] long int precision lost

IOhannes m zmoelnig zmoelnig at iem.at
Tue Dec 7 08:54:58 CET 2004


Tim Blechmann wrote:

> 
> be warned ... tim
> 


so this has become a long thread where everybody (including me) seems to 
want to make sure, that the worst thing you can think about is to change 
the precision of pd's numbers.
this is not true.

basically it would be very good, if we could change pd's "float" to 
whatever we need, at least to "double" by just changing a single line of 
code.
this is why there is a "typedef float t_float"-line in m_pd.h in the 
first place!
this would be perfect especially when thinking about newer architectures 
like 64bit.

anyhow, as this thread has shown it is a hard thing to do:
however, people (coders) should be encouraged to
1) use pd's data-types whenever possible rather than built-in's 
throughout the code
2) mark code that depends on data-types as such; of course hand-tailored 
code like SSE-instructions will not work survive data-type  changes, but 
at least proper mark-up would make it easy to spot this code.
the problem of cahgning-datatypes also encourages (in my opinion) to 
write such code at least 2 times: once as a generic implementation that 
would compile on any architecture and with "any" data-size and once as 
an "optimized" one.


mfg.a.dr
IOhannes






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