🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <650012@hpclscu.HP.COM> shankar@hpclscu.HP.COM (Shankar Unni) writes:
>Henry Spencer writes:
>
>> the fine points is still desirable.)  Compiler designers today understand
>> that it may be better to convert COBOL numbers to binary for arithmetic
>> than to mess up the hardware with decimal instructions, for example.
>> COBOL programs are seldom arithmetic-bound anyway.
>
>A minor point (I agree with everything else you said on this topic):
>
>It is *not* generally OK for COBOL numbers to be converted to binary for
>arithmetic. COBOL programmers work in exact fixed point fractions.
>Converting to floating point, while taking care of the magnitude, leaves
>much to be desired in terms of precision. Integer arithmetic has the
>opposite problem: precision is fine, magnitude is not.

I believe Herny was suggesting that operations on integers (or sets of
integers) rather than BCD. No one is suggesting, that I know of, that
BCD be converted to floating point and etc.
Keith H. Bierman    |*My thoughts are my own. !! kbierman@sun.com
It's Not My Fault   |	MTS --Only my work belongs to Sun* 
I Voted for Bill &  | Advanced Languages/Floating Point Group            
Opus                | "When the going gets Weird .. the Weird turn PRO"