From: Lutz.Vieweg@p0.f20.n24730.z2.FIdonet.ORG (Lutz Vieweg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp48
Subject: Another BUG in the OS
Date: 13 Sep 91

I'd like you to notice another bug in the 48sx OS. It's the typical
"programmer-too-lazy" bug:

Type:                  Result:

1_s^128                1:   1_s^128
UBASE                  1: 1_1/s^128    ???????????

Looks funny? You cannot use exponents on units higher than 127.

cu, Lutz Vieweg.

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[Reply]

From: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum)
Date: 15 Sep 91
Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway

A bug, eh?

This is technically known as a restriction, not a bug.

Just as you can't enter a date prior to 1582-10-15, set alarms later
than 2088-12-31, you can't have fractional unit dimensions during
calculations, or dimensions in excess of +- 127.  You also can't have
real numbers the absolute value of which exponent is greater than 499,
or with more than 15-digit mantissas during calculation.  Or binary
numbers with more than 64 significant bits.

This is in fact mentioned in James Donnelly's /The HP 48 Handbook/,
page 9.

I happen to think that giving us the ability to calculate in units up
to the 128th power was kind of nice of Hewlett Packard.  The Real
World has some restrictions by itself, and I'm sure happy that Hewlett
Packard has made the calculator significantly _more_ lax than most of
them.

</Erik>