A quarter-century ago I was part of the IEEE 854 group that tried to
suggest a
radix free arithmetic standard. One of the interests was decimal
arithmetic. I actually
have owned 2 decimal arithmetic computers, a North Star Horizon (with
decimal
hardware I had to build by hand from a kit) and a Radio Shack TRS80
Model 100,
which used software BCD arithmetic. Interestingly, the same h/w for the
TRS80 by
NEC used binary FP.
With the number of times the question of arithmetic coming up on this
list, one wonders
if a decimal arithmetic version of R, or other software too, might not
be worthwhile.
There are other issues that arise, of course, but binary floating point
does upset folk
used to working in base 10, and the I/O conversions do make things look
messy.
JN
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