On 25 Feb 2014 15:16:54 -0800, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote: >>There is evidence that IBM's COBOL people are thinking hard about >>making Mike Cowlishaw's ANSI-standard DFP available in COBOL. They >>may even have progressed further. Tom can, however, speak for himself >>and will, I suspect, do so. > >Actually, we have it on our list of things that we will for sure do. >More interesting, I think, is that we use DFP instructions heavily , >in COBOL V5 for all kinds of decimal arithmetic, with External Decimal >conversion and arithmetic on Packed-Decimal data. This is more >interesting because lots of shops have External Decimal and Packed-Decimal >data, while almost NO shops have Decimal Floating Point data. In fact, >many shops have hex floating-point data stored in databases today. >So, adding a DFP data type for COBOL would not really help anyone right >away. To take advantage, users would have to write new code, create >new data (or convert old data) and build up DFP data that way.
One interesting question is whether packages or Java have the possibility of creating DFP data in a given shop. PL1, C/C++, Java and DB2 version 10 all support Decimal Floating Point. Adding decimal floating point to COBOL along with the rounding options in IEE754 could allow some shops that require rounding to nearest even or other special rounding to get rid of complicated in house routines. I know that the shop I was associated with from 1966 through 1991 had bit switches on their customer, product and open account files. I have seen on the COBO? news group and here references to other organizations that have bit switches on their files and maybe data bases. Having the ability to specify both IEEE and hex floating point in the same program could be useful for use with Java and various data bases. Clark Morris > >Adding exploitation of DFP instructions to COBOL V5 means everyone can >take advantage of these wonderful instructions without changing any >data or source programs! > >All you have to do is convert your PDS dataset COBOL load libraries to >PDSE dataset load libraries and then buy COBOL V5! > >Cheers, >TomR >> COBOL is the Language of the Future! << > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
