(j3.2006) decimal floats

[Andy Vaught]

On Fri, 11 Jan 2008, Robert Corbett wrote:

> 
> I agree that implicit conversions should be banned.  There should be
> functions for explicit conversions.  I suspect that most people do not
> understand how expensive radix conversions are, especially for large
> exponents.
> 
> Some people on the committee think arithmetic should be done in the
> format used to represent values in memory.  That could create problems
> for programs that use IEEE 754r's storage format such as binary16 and
> decimal32.

  The parsing and printing of binary numbers to and from ascii is a prime
example of radix conversion.

  The fortran philosophy of the past, however, is that you can even
interoperate reals and integers without explicit conversion.  Or even
adding reals to logicals on some implementations.  If people are concerned
about speed, they're going to figure out not to do a conversion pretty
quick, and, IMO, not use decimal arithmetic at all.

          Andy