Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 11:00:48 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org Subject: Exchange rate fluctuations (was: cvs commit: src/usr.bin/units units.lib) Message-ID: <20020711013048.GG19048@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <200207102103.g6AL3s8Y046834@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> References: <200207100913.g6A9DgKX009215@freefall.freebsd.org> <xzpr8ibhmlb.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <20020710131548.D36004@uriah.heep.sax.de> <xzplm8jg1wc.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <200207102103.g6AL3s8Y046834@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
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On Wednesday, 10 July 2002 at 17:03:54 -0400, Garrett Wollman wrote: > <<On 10 Jul 2002 15:15:15 +0200, Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org> said: > >> all fine and dandy, except today's rate is 1.0115, and last Friday it >> was 1.03, and tomorrow's rate will be something else again, and next >> month it might be 0.95 or it might be 1.15, who knows? And you still >> insist this is meaningful? > > Most exchange rates do not change very rapidly over time. USD 1.50 has > been approximately equal to GBP 1 for a very long time. For some definition of 1.50. In fact, the exchange rate fluctuates wildly enough for these things to be completely useless. > Similarly, before Eurofication, there were almost a dozen European > currencies all approximately equal to each other and about USD 0.18. I can't think of more than about 4 in that range *directly* before Eurofication. I have a good memory of the relationship between USD and DEM. The DEM was about USD 0.40 in the early 80s, and it went up to about USD 0.75 in the early 90s, and then back to about USD 0.55 before it disappeared for good. I don't think this is a range which can be usefully replaced by a constant. > (It would be nice, if we're going to have currencies in units.lib, > if it would accept standard ISO 4617 symbols.) If the tables were > updated yearly, that's probably good enough for most uses. No, I think it's useless for most uses. There are URLs which will give you more useful information, such as http://www.oanda.com/converter/classic. Having these things in static local proograms is completely out of date, like the (now retired) international telephone codes. I think that units should contain constants, not snapshots of variables. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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