On Sep 22, 2016, at 4:55 PM, John Cowan <xxxxxx@ccil.org> wrote:

On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 2:32 PM, Bradley Lucier <xxxxxx@math.purdue.edu> wrote:

2. Under (make-binary-flonum x n) it says

Returns the flonum (fl* x (expt fl-radix n)), where n is a non-negative integer with an implementation-dependent maximum value. (C99 scalbn)

Why is this "make-binary-flonum", when "make-flonum" assumes that the fl-radix is 2?

Cut and paste disease. Fixed.

I’ve worked professionally with floating-point arithmetic in radix 2, 16, 10, and 100 (the last in UCSD Pascal on Texas Instruments bit-slice processors) but I think that it may be better for a spec designed today to limit itself to radix 2. I can’t think of any active arithmetic in another radix.