Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: architectural support in languages (was Re: Generalizing Integers)
Message-ID: <1989May5.172059.20670@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1032@myrias.UUCP> <12289@reed.UUCP> <16568@winchester.mips.COM> <10377@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> <3899@ficc.uu.net> <2788@garth.UUCP> <2052@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Fri, 5 May 89 17:20:59 GMT

In article <2052@Portia.Stanford.EDU> alderson@Jessica (Rich Alderson) writes:
>The previous posting was wrong about the use of type markers such as "B" for
>binary integers:  Fixed binary was represented as either decimal digits (with
>conversion) or as binary digits with a suffixed "B" to prevent their interpre-
>tation as large decimal numbers.  Thus, a FIXED BINARY(31,16) number represen-
>ting 2**5+2**-1 could be either "32.5" or "10000.1B"--the compiler made no
>distinction.

Please check the very fine print.  Unless I'm much mistaken, you will find
that "32.5" is a FIXED DECIMAL constant, which is implicitly converted to
FIXED BINARY in most situations.  Ugh.
-- 
Mars in 1980s:  USSR, 2 tries, |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
2 failures; USA, 0 tries.      | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu