CLibraries

3.3 Release Notes:
ANSI C Libraries

This release note mentions important items with regard to NEXTSTEP's ANSI C libraries.

Notes Specific to Release 3.1

Known Problems:

Reference: 34690

Problem: The atof(3) and strtod(3) functions produce different results for non-numbers on m68k and i386 architectures.

Description: On the m68k architecture, atof() and strtod() improperly interpret a leading 'i', 'n', or 's' as representing the floating-point values Infinity, NaN, and SNaN, respectively. On the i386 architecture these functions properly return 0.0 for the above cases, as well as for any other non-numeric string. In addition to producing different results, this may surprise users who've been used to typing values like "infinity" in text fields.

Workaround: To insure consistent results, your code should check that the first non-whitespace, non-sign character of a string is a digit or decimal separator before calling atof() or strtod().

If you want to accept string values such as "infinity", your code should explicitly check for them before calling atof() or strtod(). For example, it should check the return of a Control's or Cell's stringValue method rather than rely on the floatValue or doubleValue methods.

	Reference:	34690

	Problem:	The atof(3) and strtod(3) functions produce different results for non-numbers on m68k and i386 architectures.

	Description:	On the m68k architecture, atof() and strtod() improperly interpret a leading 'i', 'n', or 's' as representing the floating-point values Infinity, NaN, and SNaN, respectively. On the i386 architecture these functions properly return 0.0 for the above cases, as well as for any other non-numeric string. In addition to producing different results, this may surprise users who've been used to typing values like "infinity" in text fields.

	Workaround:	To insure consistent results, your code should check that the first non-whitespace, non-sign character of a string is a digit or decimal separator before calling atof() or strtod().

		If you want to accept string values such as "infinity", your code should explicitly check for them before calling atof() or strtod(). For example, it should check the return of a Control's or Cell's stringValue method rather than rely on the floatValue or doubleValue methods.