From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-01-12 07:39:45
At 02:28 AM 1/12/2005, Martin wrote:
>> The folks pushing the decimal TR have been claiming that the integer
>> subset is robust enough to handle the usual integer operations.
>> Presumably it would include everything needed to implement fixed-point.
>
>That is my view as well and that is why I created my decimal64 type. Do
you
>mean that we don't need a fixed decimal type since everyone can implement
>it themselves using integers?
Martin, we are going over a lot of the same ground already covered in the
review of Bill Seymore's library. I think you should read through a lot of
those comments.
>...
>> don't know if binary would have been more useful than decimal. But
since
>> sometimes we were implementing tax related algorithms specified by law
as
>> decimal calculations, it was convenient to work in fp-decimal.
>
>Laws are different everywhere ofcourse but the ones I have seen specify
the
>number of decimals to use in a calculation and not the number of digits.
>Did you use a fp-decimal type where you could limit the size of the
>mantissa?
No. The calculations involved petroleum products like propane, with volumes
ranging from a few gallons to whole underground caverns full of the stuff.
The volumes have to be temperature compensated with a coefficient of
expansion. It gets messy.
--Beman