Re: COBOL, Article on new mainframe use

John Levine wrote:

>
According to Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo@nz.invalid>:
 

Oh, and compound interest requires working with transcendental
functions, doesn’t it?

 
Uh, no, it's just repeated multiplication.

 
For some simple bonds, parts of the price or yield calculations are
integer power series so one could roll your own integer power function
optimized to do the minimum number of multiplies.
 
   x^17 = ((((x^2)^2)^2)^2)*x