Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site cca.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!wjh12!genrad!decvax!cca!g-rh From: g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: Why 'C' does not need BCD... Message-ID: <1138@cca.UUCP> Date: Thu, 13-Dec-84 07:53:12 EST Article-I.D.: cca.1138 Posted: Thu Dec 13 07:53:12 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 15-Dec-84 01:58:14 EST References: <166@harvard.ARPA> <247@desint.UUCP>, <423@digi-g.UUCP> Organization: Computer Corp America, Cambridge Lines: 23 Mr. Messinger writes at length and with marvellous sarcasm about how much slower BCD arithmetic is than binary arithmetic. This is all very true IF THE MACHINE IN QUESTION DOES NOT SUPPORT BCD ARITHMETIC. On IBM mainframes, however, BCD arithmetic is supported in HARDWARE and is as fast as binary arithmetic. Lest we forget, IBM has greater revenues than all of the rest of the computer industry combined. There are, in fact, very good reasons for using BCD in certain types of applications. The most obvious is that it is much cheaper to convert BCD numbers to decimal character strings than it is to convert binary numbers to decimal character strings. In business applications BCD is superior -- if it is supported in hardware. Since C is not a particularly convenient language to use in an IBM shop and since almost nobody besides IBM supports hardware BCD there seems to be little need for BCD in C. Richard Harter (SMDS Inc.) cca!g-rh