ECMAScript Version 5 Approved

systembug writes "After 10 years of waiting and some infighting, ECMAScript version 5 is finally out, approved by 19 of the 21 members of the ECMA Technical Committee 39. JSON is in; Intel and IBM dissented. IBM is obviously in disagreement with the decision against IEEE 754r, a floating point format for correct, but slow representation of decimal numbers, despite pleas by Yahoo's Douglas Crockford." (About 754r, Crockford says "It was rejected by ES4 and by ES3.1 — it was one of the few things that we could agree on. We all agreed that the IBM proposal should not go in.")

Comments

I can guess why IBM was pushing for IEEE 754r

[tjwhaynes]

The debate over floating point numbers in ECMAScript is interesting. IEEE 754 has plenty of pitfalls for the unwary but it has one big advantage - it is directly supported by the Intel-compatible hardware that 99+% of desktop users are running. Switching to the IEEE 754r in ECMA Script would have meant a speed hit to the language on the Intel platform until Intel supports it in hardware. This is an area where IBM already has a hardware implementation of IEEE 754r - its available on the POWER6 platform and I believe that the z-Series also has a hardware implementation. I suspect that IBM will continue to push for IEEE 754r in ECMAScript, I wonder whether Intel is considering adding IEEE 754r support to its processors in the future.

Disclaimer: I have no contact with the IBM ECMAScript folks.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes