From: Jim Battle <frustum(a)pacbell.net>
Unless you are doing financial work where the
fractional numbers tend to
be
inherently decimal, BCD arithmetic, for a given number
of bytes of
storage,
is less accurate than binary. As a BCD byte can
represent only 100
states
vs 256 for binary, you are going to lose more than one
bit of accuracy
per
Sinppage....
Never confuse accuracy with resolution or range.
Most BCD systems were less prone to truncation, rounding and other
cumulative errors within their range. Binary for the number of bits gave
more
resolution but sometimes at the expense of accuracy.
So, OK, 0.1 (base 10) can't be exactly represented
in a binary format,
but
0.11111 (base 16) can't be represented exactly in
an 8B BCD
representation.
If you meant .1 and got .11111 that would be a significant error! same
for
say meaning .1 and getting .09999.
Allison