Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!dalcs!aucs!850347s
From: 850347s@aucs.UUCP (Hume Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Reason for using BCD arithmetic
Message-ID: <1359@aucs.UUCP>
Date: 8 Nov 88 19:17:43 GMT
References: <8810211335.AA19348@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <8737@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1358@aucs.UUCP>
Reply-To: 850347s@aucs.UUCP (Hume Smith)
Organization: Mathematics, Acadia U., Nova Scotia
Lines: 12

In article <8737@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>In article <8810211335.AA19348@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> BBUXEIPD@UIAMVS.BITNET (Robert Pearson) writes:
>>You are quite correct that BCD arithmetic has 'roundoff error'.
>>That is incorrect.  Not all so-called "floating point" schemes have fixed
>>significand size, and some (including those using variable-length BCD
>>strings) are able to represent results of arithmetic operations exactly.

I was about to say: Even sqrt(2)? arctan(1)? exp(1)?  but then I realised
these aren't EXACTLY arithmetic operations.  Can someone clarify?

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