Quote Originally Posted by n1ghtowl
leinad31- thanks for the reply. my understanding of why it is using 4 digits wide is when you muliply a 4 digit number (16 bit)by a 4 digit number (16 bit)you may get up to an 8 digit number(32bit).
Largest 4-digit number is 9999 which multiplies to 99980001, so you're right there...however, 9999 isn't a 16-bit number *exactly*, as 65536 is 16 bit, 32768 is 15 bit, 16384 is 14 bit (which is where 9999 fits in as the next one is 8192 which is lower than the value)...if 9999 is 14 bit then 99980001 is either 27 bit or 28 bit.

Not that that is an important point to make...if you're planning to include compression of the values within the program though, this would make a lot of difference (I'd assume you're not, it's not the frontmost thought in most people's minds and unless you're working with many millions of numbers it's not worth doing)

(note, the bit levels are from memory, so I can't guarantee they're right :-))