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From: karsh@geowhiz.UUCP (Bruce Karsh)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: C needs BCD...
Message-ID: <152@geowhiz.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 10-Nov-84 00:04:33 EST
Article-I.D.: geowhiz.152
Posted: Sat Nov 10 00:04:33 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Nov-84 20:01:14 EST
References: <135@harvard.ARPA>
Distribution: net
Organization: UW Madison, Geology Dept.
Lines: 22

> If you really want to add a new data type to 'C' then 'veryLong' (i.e.
> 64bit integers) might be a lot more useful than 'bcd'.

I think that a veryLong data type would be a good addition to C.  I don't
understand where the idea that 32 bits is enough came from anyway.  Perhaps
it is a leftover from the days when memory was so expensive that using up
more than 32 bits for an integer was prohibitively expensive.

There is a long list of integer quantities which are commonly used and
won't fit into 32 bits.  Two common examples are financial quantities
(greater than $20Million), and time expressed to a resolution of 
1 microsecond for a year.

I like the increased accuracy and reliability of working with integer
representations instead of floating point representations.  I'd like
to see more language support for this.
-- 
Bruce Karsh                                        ---------------------------
Univ. Wisconsin Dept. of Geology and Geophysics    |                         |
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