Dann Corbit wrote:
> "Tor Rustad" <tor_rustad@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:9c-dnQDPb81DwLva4p2dnAA@telenor.com...
>> Malcolm McLean wrote:
>>> In reality we would use a floating point rather than an integer type.
>> No, most financial institutions are not even allowed to use floating-point
>> for financial calculations. In fact, I have only seen fixed point
>> calculations, when dealing with money.
>
> Even for time value of money calculations (e.g. compound interest)?

I haven't programmed or audited code for compound interest calculations,
but when I analyzed all the COBOL sources (for Y2K bugs) of a major
in-house system, no floating-point code was scanned (approx 300.000 LOC).

COBOL has built in support for fixed-point calculations, so when dealing
with monetary computations on mainframes, that's the natural pick IMO.

--
Tor <bwzcab@wvtqvm.vw | tr i-za-h a-z>