nathan@orstcs.UUCP (03/18/84)
Re: What next, 64 bits?
You are *wrong*.
A spreadsheet is probably the single most useful place to put
64 bit numbers. Think about how much money you can represent
in 32 bits: (hint -- $20 million). This isn't enough, even,
for a small-to-medium company. Most programmers have given
up and use floating point representations of dollar figures,
rather than the (less treacherous) integer number of cents.
The inability of most C compilers to support a more-than-32-bit
representation without going to floating point is (in my view)
a major limitation in the language. (that's not to say that
other languages are any better; Modula-2 doesn't even allow
32-bit numbers to be specified.)
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