September 1993 - NUMERICAL PROGRAMMING


FEATURES

RECURSIVE WORLDS

by Clifford A. Pickover

Recursion is fundamental to computer science, mathematics, biology, art, and even linguistics. Cliff examines recursive lattices, classes of self-similar objects that can easily be constructed using checkerboards of different sizes.

ARBITRARY PRECISION FLOATING-POINT ARITHMETIC

by Frederick C. Motteler

Here's a general-purpose C library for extended precision and IEEE-754 compatibility. The K&R/ANSI C/C++ compatible package supports single, double, double-extended, and longer, IEEE-754-like formats and is portable across operating systems including UNIX and MS-DOS.

ALGEBRA AND THE LAMBDA CALCULUS

by Aubrey Jaffer

Aubrey describes how he implemented lambda calculus in "Jacal," a symbolic mathematics system for the simplification and manipulation of equations.

EXAMINING THE WINDOWS AARD DETECTION CODE

by Andrew Schulman

Andrew takes a close look at the Windows "AARD" code which, under certain conditions, can generate a mysterious error message.

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

THE Z80180 AND BIG-NUMBER ARITHMETIC

by Burton S. Kaliski, Jr.

There's nothing difficult about performing big-number arithmetic on powerful 32-bit processors like the 486 or Pentium. But where do you start if you want to implement 512-bit operations on 8-bit controllers? That's the problem Burt recently faced--and here's his solution.

NETWORKED SYSTEMS

ACCESSING NETWARE SQL FILES WITHOUT NETWARE SQL

by Douglas Reilly

Doug shares techniques that let you use Btrieve, NetWare's SQL file-manager engine, to duplicate the functionality of NetWare SQL. This gives access to NetWare SQL files without requiring your users to have NetWare SQL.

EXAMINING ROOM

PORTING FROM WORKSTATIONS TO PCs

by Barr E. Bauer

Porting compute- and data-intensive Fortran applications from high-performance workstations to low-cost PCs has been a promise waiting for fulfillment. Barr describes his experiences in porting a simulated-annealing program, originally written for the VAX, to a 386SX platform.

PROGRAMMER'S WORKBENCH

MODELING SYSTEMS WITH POLYNOMIAL NETWORKS

by Peter D. Varhol

Polynomial networks, which are based on the premise that different combinations of polynomials can minimize the error between derived and expected outputs, enable you to quickly build systems for predicting behavior.

COLUMNS

PROGRAMMING PARADIGMS

by Michael Swaine

According to Michael, AppleScript is Apple's idea of what a scripting system can and ought to be, at least on a 1993-vintage graphical user interface and operating system.

C PROGRAMMING

by Al Stevens

Al examines the next hot C++ language feature--exception handling. As he explains, exception handling allows one part of a program to detect and report exceptional conditions and another part to handle them.

ALGORITHM ALLEY

by Tom Swan

Last month, Tom introduced algorithms and test programs for compressing and decompressing Windows bitmap files. This month, he presents the remaining test programs and a C++ utility that compresses real 256-color bitmap files.

UNDOCUMENTED CORNER

edited by Andrew Schulman

In this first installment of a two-part article, Pete Davis documents the undocumented Windows .HLP file format. This month, Pete explains the basics of the "WHIFS" B-tree system, and explains a few of the internal files.

PROGRAMMER'S BOOKSHELF

by Lynne Greer Jolitz

While you can't keep network systems and data under lock and key, there are security techniques you can still employ. Lynne examines the approaches presented in UNIX System Security and UNIX Installation, Security, and Integrity.

FORUM

EDITORIAL

by Jonathan Erickson

LETTERS

by you

SWAINE'S FLAMES

by Michael Swaine

PROGRAMMER'S SERVICES

OF INTEREST


Copyright © 1993, Dr. Dobb's Journal