C needs BCD...

[Bruce Karsh]

> If you really want to add a new data type to 'C' then 'veryLong' (i.e.
> 64bit integers) might be a lot more useful than 'bcd'.

I think that a veryLong data type would be a good addition to C.  I don't
understand where the idea that 32 bits is enough came from anyway.  Perhaps
it is a leftover from the days when memory was so expensive that using up
more than 32 bits for an integer was prohibitively expensive.

There is a long list of integer quantities which are commonly used and
won't fit into 32 bits.  Two common examples are financial quantities
(greater than $20Million), and time expressed to a resolution of 
1 microsecond for a year.

I like the increased accuracy and reliability of working with integer
representations instead of floating point representations.  I'd like
to see more language support for this.
-- 
Bruce Karsh                                        ---------------------------
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