C needs BCD (ANSI People: Please Listen)

[Henry Spencer]

> Unfortunately, C does not give a programmer access to the BCD machine
> instructions offered by most modern computers/microprocessors.

It doesn't give you access to lots of other interesting instructions,
either.  There's no way to exploit string instructions in C, for example,
without either a *smart* optimizing compiler or an interface that at
least looks like a function call.  Strings strike me as a much bigger
issue than BCD arithmetic, and they have many of the same problems, too;
if C isn't going to do anything sexy about strings [for the record, I
am opposed to any attempt to do so, on the grounds that it's too big a
change and too difficult], then there really isn't any reason to single
out BCD for special treatment.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry