RE: floating point

["Andrew Smith" <ah_smith@acm.org>]

Jon,

Before deciding to go there, I would first check your initial premise that
you "have to" define some floating point objects. Maybe there's a simpler
kludge that is sufficient e.g. a) define the units in 10ths, 100ths or
1000ths; b) define as 1/x where x is an integer; c) define as an exponent
2^^x or 10^^x; d) any combination of the above. Such kludges have usually
been sufficient.

Of course I'm sure you've done that and have valid reasons for needing
greater dynamic range or something, but using true floating point is quite a
leap (and arbitrary fixed point arithmetic ought to be simpler than floating
point but often turns out not to be due to lack of suitable libraries or
other reasons). And if this debate has already been had on the SMIng list
then my apologies for wasting time/space.

Andrew


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-mibs@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-mibs@ops.ietf.org]On Behalf
Of Jon Saperia
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 5:32 AM
To: mibs@ops.ietf.org
Subject: floating point


I have to define some objects as floating point and can not wait for the
sming work to be completed. Is there a convention that people have used
such as two objects with one indicating the number of decimal places?


Thanks,
/jon

--
Jon Saperia		     saperia@jdscons.com
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