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Path: ...!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!not-for-mail From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: evolution of arithmetic, was bytes, The joy of FORTRAN Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2025 03:05:42 -0000 (UTC) Organization: Taughannock Networks Message-ID: <vq36a6$cbc$3@gal.iecc.com> References: <vpl91g$25q46$1@dont-email.me> <vq1rmc$to24$1@paganini.bofh.team> <vq2j6n$v1q6$3@dont-email.me> <vq31t7$14njc$1@paganini.bofh.team> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2025 03:05:42 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="12652"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" In-Reply-To: <vpl91g$25q46$1@dont-email.me> <vq1rmc$to24$1@paganini.bofh.team> <vq2j6n$v1q6$3@dont-email.me> <vq31t7$14njc$1@paganini.bofh.team> Cleverness: some X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Originator: johnl@iecc.com (John Levine) Bytes: 2543 Lines: 29 According to Waldek Hebisch <antispam@fricas.org>: >In alt.folklore.computers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote: >> On Sun, 2 Mar 2025 14:58:22 -0000 (UTC), Waldek Hebisch wrote: >> >>> IBM deemed decimal arithmetic to be necessary for comercial market. >> >> Interesting to see a recognition nowadays that even scientific users might >> be interested in decimal arithmetic, too. Look at how the latest version >> of the IEEE 754 spec includes decimal data types in addition to the >> traditional binary ones. > >Pushing decimal numbers into modern hardware is practical idiocracy. >Basically, IBM wants to have a selling point so they pushed inclusion >in standards. ... Yes, but. Decimal floating point is not the same as binary floating point. Its goal is to provide predictable decimal rounding, which is important in many financial calculations. Forty years ago I implemented the financial functions like bond pricing for Javelin. That required simulating decimal rounding with binary arithmetic, which was quite painful. If DFP makes it easier to get correct rounding on zillion dollar financial calculations it could well be worth the cost. That's different from BCD integer arithmetic which I agree long ago stopped making sense. -- Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly