[Info-vax] Decimal Floating Point (was: Re: Which programming language would you like to see officially supported on VMS ?)

[Stephen Hoffman]

Changed subject, as the rest of the thread is discussing financial 
transfers and payments info...

On 2020-02-29 23:28:19 +0000, already5chosen at yahoo.com said:

> On Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 12:41:55 AM UTC+2, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> 
>> That is the scientific calculation.
>> 
>> But that is not the exact financial calculation.
>> 
>> You got 1 dollar that you need to split in 3 equal portions.
>> 
>> A 20 or 30 digit approximation to 1/3 is never the correct answer.
>> 
>> You need 3 x 0.33 + a bucket for 0.01 or 2 x 0.33 + 0.34.
> 
> And I don't see how any language/libray-class/numeric-format could help 
> to do it automatically.
> On the other hand, any sufficiently precise format is good to do it 
> non-automatically at application level, using div/mod or similar 
> facility.
> And "decimality" of numeric format certainly does not matter.

The IEEE 754 floating point standard includes decimal floating point 
support in its most recent two revisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_floating_point

Of course, the details of IEEE 754 compliance can and do vary by 
implementation.

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