Making arithmetic expressions efficient

Computation of arithmetic expressions that are evaluated in floating point is most efficient when the operands need little or no conversion. Use operands that are COMP-1 or COMP-2 to produce the most efficient code.

About this task

Define integer items as BINARY or PACKED-DECIMAL with nine or fewer digits to afford quick conversion to floating-point data. Also, conversion from a COMP-1 or COMP-2 item to a fixed-point integer with nine or fewer digits, without SIZE ERROR in effect, is efficient when the value of the COMP-1 or COMP-2 item is less than 1,000,000,000.