It is the embryo of a set of numerical classes for Eiffel. The first class handles the classification of IEEE Floating Point numbers, classifying zeros, NaNs, infinities, normal and subnormal number. But the normal implementation does not do this. The implementation of the IEEE rounding modes control permits an easy and efficient implementation of interval arithmetic. If Eiffel could provide interval arithmetic facilities that are well integrated it would go a long way in diagnosing and preventing problems in numerical software.
Interval arithmetic provides a way to estimate the roundoff errors in floating point computation.
In synthesis, it is able to warn the programmer when he is using a numerically instable algorithm and to determine how many figures of the results are significative.