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• C++ Programming
• VC++ floating-point

• Performance as a Design Consideration

  For many years now I've been frustrated by industry development practices that approach software performance in an ad hoc manner rather than as a design issue. Every time I argue in favor of considering a feature’s potential performance issues up front Read More... Posted Monday, October 27, 2008 11:50 PM by ericflee | 1 Comments

• Simplifying C++ NULL terminated string handling

  I wrote the following short article several years ago. I've reproduced it here by request Once of the curious features of the C language is its lack of an integrated string type. Most programming languages developed in the 1960/70s included a basic string Read More... Posted Thursday, April 17, 2008 3:04 PM by ericflee | 1 Comments

• How to do Object Properties in C++

  One of the many useful features of modern languages like C# are object properties , as they provide a higher level of encapsulation than public fields. The field-like syntax is far easier to read and write than traditional C++ Get XXX and Set XXX functions. Read More... Posted Thursday, April 17, 2008 3:03 PM by ericflee | 0 Comments Filed under: C++ Programming

• #pragma once

  Most C++ compilers now support the non-standard #pragma once compiler directive. This directive instructs the compiler to #include the file only once in a single compiland, and replaces the old C-style header sentinels (often called #include guards ). Read More... Posted Thursday, April 17, 2008 3:02 PM by ericflee | 2 Comments Filed under: C++ Programming

• Eschew Obfuscation

  While some may think that naming conventions are much ado about nothing , no other subject of coding standards evokes as much fervent discourse. When I first started programming for Windows back in college ( ca 1990), I was baffled that all these really Read More... Posted Thursday, April 17, 2008 3:01 PM by ericflee | 1 Comments

• The trouble with long double

  Back in ‘04 I made a prediction that 80 bit floating point values would likely be supported in some future version of the VC++ compiler (just like we did in the 16bit version of the compiler!). Alas, it’s now ’07 and much to my disappointment this will Read More... Posted Saturday, September 15, 2007 5:54 PM by ericflee | 0 Comments Filed under: VC++ floating-point

• Typesafe method of interfacing to DirectX shaders

  I thought this idea might be of interest to DirectX C++ programmers. Typesafety is perhaps the most critical feature of higher programming languages, and yet so often application programming interfaces introduce non-typesafe constructs. This is frequently Read More... Posted Thursday, August 10, 2006 2:59 PM by ericflee | 0 Comments

• Stanley110 asks...

  Sorry I haven't had time to post in quite a while. I’ve been developing the new Xbox Live Arcade for the upcoming Xbox 360, a project that has taken considerable time and effort. Stanley110 asks: A) Excel uses double precision. What benefit with respect Read More... Posted Thursday, September 01, 2005 1:29 AM by ericflee | 0 Comments

• Visual Studio 2005 Beta

  Several people have sent technical support questions to me. I'm not ignoring you; I am interested in your comments. However, I don't have time to answer technical support questions in my blog. I would refer readers to http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/default.aspx Read More... Posted Thursday, December 23, 2004 11:34 AM by ericflee | 0 Comments

• Single Vs. Double ...

  It’s almost Christmas as evidenced by how dead the office is; it’s pretty common for people at Microsoft to take-off the week of Christmas, and sometimes the following week. MS is fairly generous with holidays, giving us both Christmas Eve and Christmas Read More... Posted Tuesday, December 21, 2004 1:45 PM by ericflee | 0 Comments

• Fused Multiply Add Question

  Sergey asks "Is there any chance that in MSVC++ 2005 Fused Multiply Add (FMA) function will be available as a part of runtime library on all supported platforms?" To my knowledge FMAs won't be supported on all platforms since not all platforms have FMA Read More... Posted Friday, December 17, 2004 5:45 PM by ericflee | 1 Comments

• Method for getting /Op like consistency in MS C++ 14.0

  (From Microsoft Visual C++ Floating-Point Optimization ) Many C++ compilers offer a "consistency" floating-point model (through a /Op or /fltconsistency switch) that enables a developer to create programs compliant with strict floating-point semantics. Read More... Posted Wednesday, July 28, 2004 4:53 PM by ericflee | 1 Comments

• Method for retaining intermediate results in extended precision

  I thought I’d post a brief entry on how to retain intermediate results in extended precision. Consider the following direct summation algorithm: double sum(double[] a, int c) { 1: double result = 0.0; 2: for (int i=0; i<c; i++) 3: result = result Read More... Posted Wednesday, July 21, 2004 5:30 PM by ericflee | 1 Comments

• Overloading the semantics of the register keyword (followup)

  John Albert asks two questions: What would "register float" mean? How would this work under fp:fast? The basic guideline is that "intermediate expressions will be computed in as high as precision as is practical". For instance, suppose for a particular Read More... Posted Friday, July 02, 2004 6:24 PM by ericflee | 0 Comments

• No inline assembly on AMD64

  Igor Abramov wrote: “Well, I was in desperate need for 80-bit long doubles. Now I coded this type as set of asm inlines and application prototype shipped in such form. But the production version will be done for amd64, in 64-bit mode for performance Read More... Posted Friday, July 02, 2004 6:18 PM by ericflee | 2 Comments