C needs BCD -- why BCD? Accountants!

[Robert Viduya]

> 
>     space
> 	There are a few cases where BCD actually uses less space than
> 	simple binary: on most machines, +/-99,999 requires you to go
> 	from 16 to 32 bits, but it fits in 6 bytes of BCD.
>

Uh, 6 bytes equals 48 bits on most machines.  
-- 
Robert Viduya
Office of Computing Services
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA 30332
Phone:  (404) 894-4669

...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,masscomp,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!robert
...!{rlgvax,sb1,uf-cgrl,unmvax,ut-sally}!gatech!gitpyr!robert