C needs BCD...
Bruce Karsh
karsh at geowhiz.UUCP
Sat Nov 10 15:04:33 AEST 1984
> If you really want to add a new data type to 'C' then 'veryLong' (i.e.
> 64bit integers) might be a lot more useful than 'bcd'.
I think that a veryLong data type would be a good addition to C. I don't
understand where the idea that 32 bits is enough came from anyway. Perhaps
it is a leftover from the days when memory was so expensive that using up
more than 32 bits for an integer was prohibitively expensive.
There is a long list of integer quantities which are commonly used and
won't fit into 32 bits. Two common examples are financial quantities
(greater than $20Million), and time expressed to a resolution of
1 microsecond for a year.
I like the increased accuracy and reliability of working with integer
representations instead of floating point representations. I'd like
to see more language support for this.
--
Bruce Karsh ---------------------------
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