Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!tiktok!meissner
From: meissner@tiktok.dg.com (Michael Meissner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Who uses BASIC these days
Message-ID: <6322@xyzzy.UUCP>
Date: 22 May 89 15:37:59 GMT
References: <11581@well.UUCP> <960018@hpclskh.HP.COM> <832@cbnewsc.ATT.COM>
Sender: usenet@xyzzy.UUCP
Reply-To: meissner@tiktok.UUCP (Michael Meissner)
Organization: Data General (Languages @ Research Triangle Park, NC.)
Lines: 26

In article <832@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpb.ATT.COM (nevin.j.liber) writes:
| In article <960018@hpclskh.HP.COM> skh@hpclskh.HP.COM (The Polar Bear) writes:
| 
| >Integer arithmetic is often of insufficient range for financial applications.
| >When you start doing programs for multi-national companies and governments,
| >you start needing exponents.
| 
| But how do you get the needed PRECISION from floating point?  Unless
| these mulit-national comanies and governments don't mind losing a few
| dollars when the numbers get too big. :-)  Please elaborate.

You use double precision, which most languages support directly.  For
example, with IEEE floating point, a double looks like:

	sign		 1 bit
	exponent	11 bits
	mantissa	52 bits + 1 hidden bit for normalization

As long the value is less than ~ 9e15 (ie, 12 full digits for dollars
+ 2 for cents), everything is fine (though if you use this scheme, you
should take some pains to make sure division is rounded to an integral
value after each division).
--
Michael Meissner, Data General.
Uucp:		...!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!meissner		If compiles were much
Internet:	meissner@dg-rtp.DG.COM			faster, when would we
Old Internet:	meissner%dg-rtp.DG.COM@relay.cs.net	have time for netnews?