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Date:	Thu, 31 May 2001 06:30:39 PDT
From:	"Lynn H. Maxson" <lmaxson@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-sundialsig@scoug.com
To:	< "scoug-sundialsig@scoug.com" > scoug-sundialsig@scoug.com >
Subject:	SCOUG-SundialSIG: What, if anything, happened?

Content Type: text/plain

"Fractional pricing is a pain. I used special coding for ease of
data entry and readability when I was still typing in numbers:
.18 was one eighth, .34 was three fourths, etc. I have data for
one stock which traded in 32nds -- Jaguar (.1732 would be 17/32).
Here's your first classroom problem: If my computer saw a data
entry of 27.78, what would the real price be?"

Assuming that the smallest fractional unit was 1/32nd, you could
have solved this using PL/I and declaring the field to be "fixed
bin (31,5), a fullword binary number with a fractional part. Of
course, if you are using REXX, C, PASCAL, COBOL, FORTRAN, JAVA,
C++, LISP, PROLOG, or even assembler, you can't do that.
27-7/8 presents no problem. As Peter suggests you let the
computer, in this instance the compiler, worry about generating
the correct code. Just note that this capability, which has never
been reproduced in any other programming language, has been
available since 1964.

So much for historical oddities of programming languages. Peter
has provided excellent insight into how he processes, stores,
maintains, and retrieves his financial data. May I suggest that
he expand it into a more formal presentation combined with a Q&A
to serve as the topic for our next Sundial SIG meeting in June?

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