The author might have something of a point in his rant that it is not exactly intuitive. When you specify 'double' you also expect computations to be done in 64 bit fp precision, so disabling the 80 bit fp flag or using SSE fp by default would have been a sane choice.
But the point remains that relying on any specific floating point semantics (in C, or any other language) is dangerous.
The potentially infinite loop in strtod was a bug, no matter how you spin it to blame the compiler. Iterative algorithms that must finish in limited time must always have a max # of iterations...
It does not seem all that unreasonable to assume (in library code for dealing with 64-bit floating point numbers) that your 64-bit floating point numbers are actually 64-bit floating point numbers.
Well this shows again that assumptions, even if they look reasonable, can be very dangerous. The C standard is vague on these things, which leaves a lot of leeway for compilers.
But the point remains that relying on any specific floating point semantics (in C, or any other language) is dangerous.
The potentially infinite loop in strtod was a bug, no matter how you spin it to blame the compiler. Iterative algorithms that must finish in limited time must always have a max # of iterations...