Densely packed decimal

[Magnum]

Has someone wrote code that uses densely packed decimals?

From what I understand, it is more efficient than BCD.

Thanks.

[dedndave]

"densely" ?

Ray did some work with packed decimals on his FPU site

http://www.ray.masmcode.com/BCDtut.html

also - the FPU can access packed BCD

http://www.ray.masmcode.com/tutorial/fpuchap6.htm

[Magnum]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densely_packed_decimal

[dedndave]

i don't see much advantage there
if you need to do that - convert to binary integer - calculate - convert back to decimal

you can fit 9 full decimal digits in a dword   :t

[Stan]

When densely packing digits was implemented, 'core' memory was expensive.  Thus, it was economically beneficial to unpack/calculate/pack.
Today, with memory being rather cheap,

I don't see much advantage there