> I suppose we could implement the conversion as "float8in(float4out(x))"
> instead of "(double) x" but it'd be several orders of magnitude slower,
> as well as being *less* useful to those who know what they're doing with
> float math (since the result would actually be a less-precise conversion
> except in cases where the intended value has a short decimal
> representation).
We only need to maintain the lower-order bit(s). Seems this could be done
a lot easier than by an ascii in-between.
Is there a reason we can't perform the conversion and then copy the
low-order bits manually, with some bit-shifting and masking?
Ian