COBOL's format allows the programmer to specify the precision of the number. This is supported by the IBM mainframe's decimal arithmentic logic. There is no analogy in the C language. Floating point is only an approximation. For instance, the COBOl specification:s9999999.99 will be stored as 5 bytes (packed decimal) with each nybble being a value between 0 and 9 decimal (except the low order nybble for the sign). There is no limit to the size of a number. While I have not looked at TinyCobol, it most likely maps its fixed point decimal to floating point. Greg Freemyer wrote:
The code is very mathematical and it heavily uses cobol's weird fixed point logic. -- Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9