On Sat, 2015-10-31 at 20:55 +0000, David Nadlinger via Digitalmars-d- learn wrote: > On Saturday, 31 October 2015 at 18:23:43 UTC, rumbu wrote: > > My opinion is that a decimal data type must be builtin in any > > modern language, not implemented as a library. > > "must be builtin in any modern language" – which modern languages > actually have decimals as a built-in type, and what is your > rationale against having them as a solid library implementation? > It seems like it would only be interesting for a very fringe > sector of users (finance, and only the part of it that actually > deals with accounting). > > — David
It is really a question of symmetry: if there are hardware implementations of both binary and denary floating point, then if a language has binary floating point in the language, then it should have denary floating point in the language. To support one hardware type in the language but relegate another hardware type to the library is inappropriate discrimination. If I remember correctly (I am on a very poor Internet connection just now and can't do the necessary research), IBM z-series has two different denary hardware types, and there is currently a question as to which of these to draw into the IEEE standard as the preferred type. I think Intel are muttering about which one to support. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
