> Am I the only person who thinks of IEEE 754 as a completely well-defined data structure Not at all... but I think there are a large number of people who thin

> Am I the only person who thinks of IEEE 754 as a completely well-defined data structure Not at all... but I think there are a large number of people who think they can imagine a better format and yet don't fully understand or appreciate much of the design of IEEE754, and they tend to be quite noisy. I think the lack of appreciation is ironically due to how damn good a format it is. It manages to hide the myriad deficiencies through such a good balance of compromises that it casts this illusion that perfect fp math is possible in a generalisable enough way. So on the occasions it surfaces the true reality, people assume it must be some kind of defect that is easily addressable with a new format; rather than an intentional decision to maximise correctness and utility by carefully choosing where and how to be incorrect. FP math is the most underestimated areas by programmers IMO, it's just taken for granted so much, which is probably a testament to how well IEEE754 works.