>>>> The 'packed decimal' format was really perfect for banks and similar.
>>>   I really can't understand why. The user doesn't need to know how
>>> integers are represented internally, so why would he care?
> 
>> You know that 1/10 can't be exactly represented in binary, but can be 
>> represented exactly in decimal, right?
> 
>   And 1/3 cannot be represented exactly in *any* base being currently
> used in any computer system. So what?

Financial transactions don't involve units of 1/3. They *do* frequently 
involve 1/10, however. (And 1/100, and smaller.)

>   Besides, 1/10 isn't an integer, so what would BCD integer registers
> help that? Any solution you devise will also work with plain binary
> registers as well.

Oh, well, if it's only *integer* arithmetic then yeah, I have no idea 
what the advantage would be.

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