On Wed, 9 Aug 2006 01:26:20 +0000, john gilmore wrote: > > In the end pandering to clots, however compelling the arguments of the > marketing VP for doing so may seem to be, is always ill-advised. > In celebration of the unveiling of Decimal Floating Point, I'll return to this, which I've been pondering for weeks.
Is Decimal FP mostly the product of wishful thinking that the magnitude range of floating point can be combined with the accounting precision of packed decimal? Has a marketing VP subscribed to a clot's belief that it will enable him to take the price of a dozen eggs in dollars; convert to euros, then shekels, then the price of a single egg in yuan, then back to a dozen in dollars and be assured of getting the original number exactly? Not so. I glanced at the document and, in fairness, it provides numerous rounding conventions that an accountant might wish to use. Will this be productive? Will the control of rounding be the aspect more valuable than floating point per se? When will COBOL and PL/I support DFP? --gil -- StorageTek INFORMATION made POWERFUL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
