phipps@fortune.UUCP (Clay Phipps) (03/20/84)
64-bit integer arithmetic is nice for exact calculations involving the (USA) federal budget or gross national product, expressed in cents. 32-bit integer arithmetic is inadequate even if the amounts are expressed in dollars. The federal deficit can still be expressed in 32-bit integer cents, at least for the next year or so. :-) Unfortunately, the ASCII numeric to integer (and back) conversion time can be a real killer. -- Clay Phipps -- {allegra,amd70,cbosgd,dsd,floyd,harpo,hpda,ihnp4, megatest,nsc,oliveb,sri-unix,twg,varian,VisiA,wdl1} !fortune!phipps