PARANOIA
Floating Point Arithmetic Tests

PARANOIA is a C program which tests the floating point arithmetic implementation on a computer.

PARANOIA was originally written in BASIC (!) by Professor William Kahan.

The original, true, correct version of PARANOIA is available in the PARANOIA subdirectory of the NETLIB web site.

Related Data and Programs:

MACHAR is a C library which computes the appropriate values of machine constants for a given machine.

MACHINE is a C library which store the appropriate values of machine constants for a given machine.

PARANOIA is also available in a FORTRAN90 version.

Reference:

• Richard Karpinski,
  Paranoia: A floating-point benchmark,
  Byte Magazine,
  Volume 10, Number 2, February 1985, pages 223-235.

Source Code:

• paranoia.c, the source code;
• paranoia.csh, commands to compile and load the source code;

Examples and Tests:

• paranoia_input.txt, a file that can be used as the input to PARANOIA.
• paranoia_output_alpha.txt, the output of a run on a Dec ALPHA;
• paranoia_output_osx.txt, the output of a run on Macintosh computer running OSX.

List of Routines:

• PARANOIA tests the floating point arithmetic implementation on a computer.
• SIGFPE is the floating point exception receiver.
• SIGN returns the sign of a floating point value.
• PAUSE pauses program execution until the user hits RETURN.
• TSTCOND checks whether an error has occurred.
• BADCOND tracks and prints the various levels of error.
• RANDOM computes a new random value.
• SQXMINX ???.
• NEWD ???.
• SR3750 ???.
• ISYEQX checks whether two quantities are equal, as they should be.
• SR3980 ???
• PRINTLFNPOSITIVE warns if a discrepancy occurred one or more times.
• TstPtUf???
• NOTIFY warns if a test appears to be inconsistent.
• MSGLIST prints out a block of test.
• INSTRUCTIONS prints some instructions.
• HEADING prints a heading.
• CHARACTERISTICS explains the arithmetic properties to be checked.
• HISTORY prints out an explanation of the program, and history.

You can go up one level to the C source codes.