[Coco] A bug in Basic09/RunB

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 07 December 2009, Wayne Campbell wrote:
>Gene,
>
>I have looked at the structure of the REAL variables in Basic09 and OSK
>Basic. I compared them to each other, and to the definition of a float and
> a double in OS-9 C. From what I could tell, you can convert a Basic09 REAL
> to a C float, or a C double, by writing a subroutine in C. Did you ever
> try something like that?

No, sorry Wayne.  I didn't see the utility for that application in doing that 
(checking lunar and solar eclipse times, in this case all the way back to 
when Julian time breaks down completely in 4713 BC).  The real in b09 gives, 
IIRC, about an 8 digit accuracy, whereas the C functions returned a 16 to 17 
digit accuracy.  All my C math for that was done in doubles and it seemed to 
agree with the historical times quoted for a couple hundred years back, and 
before that our timekeeping was a little fuzzy.  Real progress in that dept. 
was seriously hindered by the church who had an earth centric view of the 
universe for at least a millenium, and men went slobbering to their graves 
trying to make the math fit the facts they could see in the sky.

Throwing away many decades(digits) of accuracy didn't seem like the thing to 
do at the time and all I was really doing was scratching an itch.  Climbing 
the mountain because it was there so to speak. :)

[...]

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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