John.Cowan wrote:
(Fast execution on processors which provide hardware flonums that are non-IEEE, now extremely rare, excepted.)
It's not too rare processors for processores to provide almost-IEEE modes. Examples include the Alpha and ARM vector coprocessor, which do not by default correctly handle denormalized numbers. Alphas are on the way out, but ARMs are likely to be around for a while.
But *real* IEEE should be the default, because Scheme values *correctness* over *speed*.
Regards, Alan -- Dr Alan Watson Centro de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica Universidad Astronómico Nacional de México