[Tiny-cobol-users] True packed decimal?

[John R. C. <jo...@we...>]

Pakced decimal, traditionally called COMPUTAIONAL-3, was basd on
the hardware capabilities for the EBCDIC based IBM mainframes.
The Intel 86 instruction set also allows us to put two decimal
digits in a byte, but isn't nearly as handy for doing decimal
arithmetic. So I have two questions:

1. In Tiny COBOL does the compiled program actually put two
decimal digits in a PACKED-DECIMAL byte?

2. Is there any efficiency advantage in doing arithmetic on data
fields classed as PACKED-DECIMAL as opposed to those classed as
DISPLAY? 

(Of course being a traditionalist I always say COMP-3 in a
program but some fool will abolish that form eventually.) 
-- 
John Culleton