"Vladimir G. Ivanovic" <vgivanovic@comcast.net> skribis:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#Accuracy.2C_and_misconceptions_thereof
> "...financial software tends not to use a binary floating-point number
> representation. The "decimal" data type of the C# and Java programming
> languages, and the IEEE 854 standard, are designed to avoid the problems
> of binary floating point, and make the arithmetic always behave as
> expected when numbers are printed in decimal." 

What you really want for financial applications is fixed point
decimal, because you can’t throw away any digits except when
dividing. For hand calculators you want binary floating point with
guard digits.

Enough research has gone into writing code for IEEE floating point
that I would not try to bypass it without a good reason. It’s there to
be your friend.

-- 
Barry.SCHWARTZ at chemoelectric.org   http://chemoelectric.org
        Free stuff / Senpagaj varoj:  http://crudfactory.com (PDF)
'Democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful countries.' - Bush
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html)