Marc.Graham@SEI.CMU.EDU (07/12/88)
I apologize to Mr. Broman for misspelling his name and hope I have it
correct this time.
As to large numbers. 32 bits gives you about 4 gigabucks. Consider the
national debt, which I am told is calculated to the penny. (if not to
the mill) The probability of that calculation being correct is
identically zero, but then it's not fair to tell the customer what his
problem is. 64 bits gives one 19 decimal digits. Roughly the square
root of decimal accuracy, and at the cost of a software hack on many
if not most machines. In short, for 19 decimal digits of precision,
decimal arithmetic is faster.
As for database io. My interest in this problem is precisely here. You
see, those decimal quantities in those databases are stored in the
decimal representation, when such a representation is present.
Marc H. Graham Software Engineering Institute
marc@sei.cmu.edu Carnegie Mellon University
(412) 268 7784 Pittsburgh, PA 15213