What is packed decimal number?

What is packed decimal number?

Packed Decimal Data A packed decimal representation stores decimal digits in each “nibble” of a byte. Each byte has two nibbles, and each nibble is indicated by a hexadecimal character. For example, the value 15 is stored in two nibbles, using the hexadecimal characters 1 and 5.

What is a packed field?

(also called “Computational-3”, “Packed Decimal”, or “Packed”) (See note 1 about terminology) COBOL Comp-3 is a binary field type that puts (“packs”) two digits into each byte, using a notation called Binary Coded Decimal, or BCD. This halves the storage requirements compared to a character, or COBOL “display”, field.

What is the floating decimal system?

Decimal floating-point (DFP) arithmetic refers to both a representation and operations on decimal floating-point numbers.

What is zoned decimal?

Zoned-decimal format means that each byte of storage can contain one digit or one character. In the zoned-decimal format, each byte of storage is divided into two portions: a 4-bit zone portion and a 4-bit digit portion.

What is the difference between decimal and packed decimal?

A zoned decimal value will have the positive / negative zone ONLY in the last byte of the value. Hence a zoned decimal value of X’F1F2F3D4′ is -1234. A packed decimal value uses the first four bits of each byte to hold a numeric digit, and the last four bits to hold another digit.

What are packed and unpacked BCD numbers?

Packed BCD ( Binary coded decimal) is type in which each decimal digit is represented by 4 bits ( 1 nibble) . For Example : 14 will be shown as 0001 0100 in packed BCD form. Unpacked BCD is type in which each decimal digit is represented by 8 bits ( 1 byte).

Why do we have a packed decimal format?

An advantage of using packed decimal data is that exact precision can be maintained. However, computations involving decimal data may become inexact due to the lack of native instructions. specifies a method of encoding decimal numbers in which each digit requires one byte of storage.

What is the difference between decimal and float?

Float stores an approximate value and decimal stores an exact value. In summary, exact values like money should use decimal, and approximate values like scientific measurements should use float. When multiplying a non integer and dividing by that same number, decimals lose precision while floats do not.

What is fixed-point and floating point?

The term ‘fixed point’ refers to the corresponding manner in which numbers are represented, with a fixed number of digits after, and sometimes before, the decimal point. With floating-point representation, the placement of the decimal point can ‘float’ relative to the significant digits of the number.

Is packed decimal EBCDIC?

The packed decimal format and informat handles the representation. It is consistent between ASCII and EBCDIC platforms.

What is the difference between packed and unpacked?

Packed array refers to dimensions declared after the type and before the data identifier name. Unpacked array refers to the dimensions declared after the data identifier name.