Re: S/360

In comp.lang.pl1 Binyamin Dissen <postingid@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 06:34:38 -0700 "Tom Linden" <tom@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
 
> :>When I went to school, Mantissa was the fractional part of the
> :>logarithm.  It has been widely misused to mean the fractional part of
> :>a normalized floating point representation of a number, googling I
> :>even found one definition as the fractional part of a real number.
> :>Now let's end it there please.
 
> That is how it is used in S/360 as well.
 
> The fractional part is not base 10, true, but there is no such
requirement.

It is a fractional part, but it isn't (most of the time)
a logarithm.  In the case of the return value from the LOG
function it would be a mantissa.  (Though that would make more
sense if it was a base 16 log for the S/360 case.  Last I knew, 
PL/I had a LOG, LOG10, and LOG2 function but no LOG16.)


-- glen