:: No, they are extended float that are munged and masked to
:: have a kind of exact precision and scale for display and
:: calculation purposes. I think Geoff talks about it in his
:: article. Delphi/ObjectPascal doesn't have any scaled

Delphi does have a currecny type though that is .xxxx, and there are plenty
of BCD libraries available.

:: numerics. I gather from Chad Hower's message that .NET has
:: a decimal type.

The Decimal value type represents decimal numbers ranging from positive
79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,335 to negative
79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,335. The Decimal value type is
appropriate for financial calculations requiring large numbers of
significant integral and fractional digits and no round-off errors.

A decimal number is a signed, fixed-point value consisting of an integral
part and an optional fractional part. The integral and fractional parts
consist of a series of digits that range from zero to nine (0 to 9),
separated by a decimal point symbol.

The binary representation of an instance of Decimal consists of a 1-bit
sign, a 96-bit integer number, and a scaling factor used to divide the
96-bit integer and specify what portion of it is a decimal fraction. The
scaling factor is implicitly the number 10, raised to an exponent ranging
from 0 to 28.

Therefore, the binary representation of a Decimal value is of the form,
((-296 to 2 96)/ 10 (0 to 28)), where -2 96 is equal to MinValue, and 296 is
equal to MaxValue.