Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!sce!greg
From: greg@sce.carleton.ca (Greg Franks)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Decimal Arithmetic
Message-ID: <800@sce.carleton.ca>
Date: 14 Mar 90 16:02:22 GMT
References: <27696@cup.portal.com> <76700176@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: greg@sce.UUCP (Greg Franks)
Organization: Systems Eng., Carleton Univ., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 14

In article <76700176@p.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>I'd like to know the exact reason for decimal arithmetic too.  

I believe that the cobol world uses decimal arithmetic because
*floating point* does not retain enough precision.  On modern
machines, this issue may be moot. 


-- 
Greg Franks   (613) 788-5726     Carleton University,             
uunet!mitel!sce!greg (uucp)  	 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada  K1S 5B6.
greg@sce.carleton.ca (bitnet)	 (we're on the internet too. (finally))
Overwhelm them with the small bugs so that they don't see the big ones.