>On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 10:49:47AM -0600, Alvaro Fernandez wrote:
>
>> It would be illuminating to me at least to know
>> which applications require 64 vs 32 bit reals, for example.
>
>That's a fairly unknowable question. You can ask what people use, but
>that's partly personal taste.
as well as many other issues. For example, having some applications
that could get by with 32 bits, but others that can't, I usually just use
64 bits as a matter of course, whether I need it or not, unless there
is specific reason otherwise. Sometimes there are specific reasons;
if you have a very large array, the memory difference might be an
issue. But for most codes, it doesn't hurt much to use 64 bits even
if you don't need it. The cost of doing so is a lot less than the maintenance
costs that result from supporting both options in all support libraries
(not to speak of the extra costs when two modules with different
sizes end up needing to work together).
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