Re: COBOL's Influence on C


"Rick Smith" <ricksmith@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Robert Jones" <rjones0@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Nov 5, 4:02 pm, "Rick Smith" <ricksm...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
From an ISO draft technical document:
-----
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG14 N1176
Date: 2006-05-24
Reference number of document: ISO/IEC WDTR 24732
Committee identification: ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG14
SC22 Secretariat: ANSI
Information Technology -
Programming languages, their environments and system software
interfaces -
Extension for the programming language C to support decimal
floating-point
arithmetic -
---
Even though the hardware may not provide decimal arithmetic
operations, the support can still be emulated by software.
Programming languages used for business applications either
have native decimal types (such as PL/I, COBOL, C#, or
Visual Basic) or provide decimal arithmetic libraries (such as
the BigDecimal class in Java). The arithmetic used, nowadays,
is almost invariably decimal floating-point; the COBOL 2002
ISO standard, for example, requires that all standard decimal
arithmetic calculations use 32-digit decimal floating-point.
-----

The COBOL 2002 version of standard arithmetic is being superceded by
two IEEE754r compliant forms called standard binary arithmetic and
standard decimal arithmetic. The new IEEE754r is still in draft, but
now seems fairly stable, at least in so far as J4 COBOL plans to
implement it. As I understand it from J4 dccuments, no one has yet
implemented the standard ariihmetic of the 2002 COBOL standard and, in
view of the forthcoming changes, it is extremely unlikely that any
will. Whether or not they implement the new forms remains to be seen,
I believe that IEEE754r recommends that at least standard decimal
arithmetic be implemented by programming languages.

Yes, all true, as I understand it; but did you at least smile,
knowing that part of the rationale for extending the C standard
was something from the COBOL standard that is effectively dead!

[I posted the quote from the C technical report as an inside
joke for those familar with the activities regarding the COBOL
standard. <g>]



I f they really want to improve C they should add an EVALUATE statement.


.

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