C needs BCD (ANSI People: Please Lis

[jab at uokvax.UUCP]

/***** uokvax:net.lang.c / x!craig /  6:31 pm  Oct 22, 1984 */
Unfortunately, C does not give a programmer access to the BCD machine
instructions offered by most modern computers/microprocessors.

Why should C provide floating point operations and not provide
BCD operations ? 
/* ---------- */
Pardon me while I bury my head in the sand.

C doesn't provide BCD for the same reasons that it doesn't provide FULL
floating-point (note that "float" is treated like a step-child, while
"double" is not). It's something that the people designing the language
simply didn't need to get their jobs done, I suspect (systems programming
is simply NOT DP programming), and its addition would have made the
compiler larger.

When the first compiler for C was written, they were talking 64K address
space, on good days.

	Jeff Bowles
	Lisle, IL