RE: Exponential

["Richard Jackson" <richardjackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There is an "arbitrary precision arithmetic" library in Java.  It does what
you want.

Java wasn't designed for any particular task.  Don't kick it in the knee for
leaving out decimal arithmetic.  Remember the IBM project called Pink?  One
of the IBM project members told me that it took more than a year to get the
other two companies on the team to allow the RISC chip to have decimal
arithmetic instructions and a string copy instruction.  The objection was
made on "religious" grounds - every RISC instruction must complete in one
clock cycle or less, etc.

Richard Jackson
mailto:richardjackson@richardjackson.net
www.richardjacksonltd.com
Voice: 1 (303) 808-8058
Fax:   1 (303) 663-4325

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-rpg400-l@midrange.com [mailto:owner-rpg400-l@midrange.com]On
Behalf Of jpcarr@TREDEGAR.COM
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 12:32 PM
To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Exponential




<SNIP>
This is because floating point uses
a binary representation and some decimal values can't be expressed
exactly as binary numbers.
<SNIP>
Barbara Morris



I noticed that in their infinite wisdom the creators of the business
language Java never included a "Decimal" variable? Is that right?  and if
you wanted decimal (as uncommon as that is in the financial business world)
you have to use a math library function involving Floating point.   Is that
right?     I guess those people at Sun weren't propeller heads after all
huh?   <VBG>   "Let them eat integers !"

This (if you are comically challenged) was a joke, so no flames.

John Carr

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