[Plplot-devel] Definition of NaN for big- and little-endian systems

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2005-04-13 13:34+0200 Arjen Markus wrote:

> Hello,
>
> while we are at it, why not introduce a PLLONGLONG (or PLINT64) too:
> not all systems (notably Windows/MSVC) like the idea of a "long long".
>
> I ran into this problem with ..lib/csa/nan.h :( (I want to add
> plgriddata() to the list of functions supported under the win32 driver).

This is a new topic so I have decided to change the subject line.

I had no idea we used long long anywhere in PLplot.  Looking closer at
lib/csa/nan.h, what is going on is a long long is being used to set up
a (64-bit) bit pattern which is then cast to double to make the appropriate
bit pattern for big-endian or little-endian double-precision NaN.

This is over-complicated and unnecessarily brings long long into the mix.
Could somebody here with the requisite C and endian skills set up the
required NaN bit patterns directly without using long long? I have seen this
done elsewhere, but I cannot remember the details.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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