Now there's a great trivia question: "When does changing data formats increase 
a fullword's range by a factor of 214?" Since 214 isn't any sort of "normal" 
value, I bet few would think of this!

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <[email protected]> On Behalf 
Of Martin Ward
Sent: Monday, December 1, 2025 7:45 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: quick way to initialize Packed fields?

A four byte packed decimal field has 7 digits plus sign for a maximum value of 
9.999999 million, not 9 billion.
A four byte signed binary has a max value of 2.14 billion

Switching from four byte packed decimal to four byte binary increases the range 
by a factor of 214.

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