24 Oct
2011
24 Oct
'11
9:25 a.m.
Decimal math (hardware supported) is used heavily in financial processing with IBM COBOL.
No loss of precision because the type is base 10. BCD is very similar to what IBM calls
"packed decimal".
------Original Message------
From: Fred Cisin
Sender: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
ReplyTo: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Fixed point financial data versus floating point - Re: Spreadsheets (was
Microsoft flamage)
Sent: 24 Oct 2011 16:07
On Sun, 23 Oct 2011, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I don't care if the radix is 2, 10 or 13. What is
normally termed
"floating point" is a slight misnomer.
Agreed.
What SHOULD we call it? (Something short and [over]simpler than "IEEE
32 bit floating point representation standard")
It's interesting that while some vendors seem to
be intent on
dropping decimal support on CPUs, there are others proposing decimal
co-processors-- and the POWER6 and 7 CPUs have always had decimal
floating point capabilities.
I will admit to sometimes using some of the BCD instructions in the 80x86
family, such as AAM, DAA, etc. 'course, other than my sales tax program,
I usually use them for stuff other than BCD.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com