Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mort96 879 days ago
> Can you elaborate? What fast-math can sneak into a library that disabled fast-math at compile time?

A lot of library code is in headers (especially in C++!). The code in headers is compiled by your compiler using your compile options.
1 comments
dahart 879 days ago
Ah, of course, very good point. A header-only library doesn’t have separate compile options. This is a great reason for a float-sensitive library to not be header-only, right?
link
mort96 879 days ago
It's not just about being header-only, lots of libraries which aren't header-only still have code in headers. The library may choose to put certain functions in headers for performance reasons (to let compiler inline them), or, in C++, function templates and class templates generally have to be in headers.

But yeah, it's probably a good idea to not put code which breaks under -ffast-math in headers if possible.

link