Mike responses in-line below

Also note property mis-spelling as dfdl:binaryVirtualDecimalPoint in section 13.7.1.1.

Regards

Steve Hanson

IBM Hybrid Integration, Hursley, UK
Architect, IBM DFDL
Co-Chair, OGF DFDL Working Group
smh@uk.ibm.com
tel:+44-1962-815848
mob:+44-7717-378890
Note: I work Tuesday to Friday

From: Mike Beckerle <mbeckerle.dfdl@gmail.com>
To: DFDL-WG <dfdl-wg@ogf.org>
Date: 03/10/2018 17:04
Subject: [DFDL-WG] Conflicting Info: binaryDecimalVirtualPoint
Sent by: "dfdl-wg" <dfdl-wg-bounces@ogf.org>

The spec has conflicting info about the property binaryDecimalVirtualPoint

Section 22.1 shows this property only being examined once binaryNumberRep is 'packed', 'bcd', or 'ibm4690Packed'.
SMH: It's also shown for 'binary' and IBM DFDL implements this.
(Note: doesn't even allow for zoned as this is 'binaryDecimal....", and zoned is considered text).
SMH: Correct. Zoned is text as you say, so VDP is provided by the 'V' character.

Section 13.7.1.1 explicitly states this property can be used with non-base-10 representations to scale the value.

While the functionality in 13.7.1.1 could be useful to people, I believe the intent of this property was to support virtual decimal points, which is, in my experience, a COBOL-oriented feature used with base-10 representations (zoned, text, or packed/bcd). In DFDL v1.0, zoned is considered textual, so this property doesn't apply to zoned numbers. That leaves only the packed/bcd representations.

I suggest these changes:
1) language in 13.7.1.1 should be revised to avoid requiring this property to apply to binaryNumberRep='binary' (aka twos-complement or unsigned binary) integers.
SMH: No, see response above
2) The definition of the property should explicitly state it applied only to base 10 binary (aka packed/bcd) representations.
SMH: No, as a corollary.

Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL Workgroup Co-Chair | Tresys Technology | www.tresys.com
Please note: Contributions to the DFDL Workgroup's email discussions are subject to the OGF Intellectual Property Policy
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