Messages from Usenet group comp.lang.idl-pvwave, compiled by Paulo Penteado
Why float is called as 'float', not 'real'?
Good day everyone. This sounds like a stupid question, but I became just curious yesterday, and I looked up several textbooks. However, no textbooks on computer language (that I have ) mentioned this. So I am asking to you, gurus... We call real numbers as real in mathematics, but we call them as 'floating point' in computer science, especially almost all computer languages. Is there any particular reason to call 'float' instead of 'real'? Thank you always, everyone in here. Harry from South Korea