🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <832@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpb.ATT.COM (nevin.j.liber) writes:
| In article <960018@hpclskh.HP.COM> skh@hpclskh.HP.COM (The Polar Bear) writes:
| 
| >Integer arithmetic is often of insufficient range for financial applications.
| >When you start doing programs for multi-national companies and governments,
| >you start needing exponents.
| 
| But how do you get the needed PRECISION from floating point?  Unless
| these mulit-national comanies and governments don't mind losing a few
| dollars when the numbers get too big. :-)  Please elaborate.

You use double precision, which most languages support directly.  For
example, with IEEE floating point, a double looks like:

	sign		 1 bit
	exponent	11 bits
	mantissa	52 bits + 1 hidden bit for normalization

As long the value is less than ~ 9e15 (ie, 12 full digits for dollars
+ 2 for cents), everything is fine (though if you use this scheme, you
should take some pains to make sure division is rounded to an integral
value after each division).
--
Michael Meissner, Data General.
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