Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!nntp.TheWorld.com!newsfeed-00.mathworks.com!panix!not-for-mail From: Grant Edwards Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: What is considered an "advanced" topic in Python? Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2015 18:23:31 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Lines: 26 Message-ID: References: <28cec7df-0f51-4098-b027-72e913a9b656@googlegroups.com> <1433128706.32838.283108057.2C4C8613@webmail.messagingengine.com> <201506010758.t517wR9T015894@fido.openend.se> <201506011028.t51ASBVG019928@fido.openend.se> <87iob78wvl.fsf@elektro.pacujo.net> <04%ax.914987$396.795703@fx12.am4> NNTP-Posting-Host: 67-130-15-94.dia.static.qwest.net X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1433183011 18002 67.130.15.94 (1 Jun 2015 18:23:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2015 18:23:31 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/1.0.1 (Linux) Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:91705 On 2015-06-01, Mark Lawrence wrote: > On 01/06/2015 18:02, Grant Edwards wrote: >> On 2015-06-01, BartC wrote: >> >>> At one time the choice was integer or floating point in many languages, >>> unless you were specifically using a business language such as Cobol. >> >> My recollection in the early days of home computers is that many BASIC >> implementations had BCD floating point instead of binary. Back then >> most CPUs had instructions specifcally for dealing with BCD >> represented with 4-bits per digit. Dunno if they still do, I can't >> even remember the last time I did calculations in BCD. >> >>> I think the Sinclair computer barely had integer types so the choice >>> was even narrower. > > Didn't Turbo C have compiler options to allow either BCD or fp? Probably. BCD support was pretty widespread in the Pascal compilers I remember for DOS and CP/M. Binary floating point didn't get very popular until HW support for it became more common. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! Now we can become at alcoholics! gmail.com