COBOL's numeric stack doesn't directly translate to many modern languages, which makes the translation introduce all sorts of fun edge cases that are extremely difficult to track down.
IEEE 754, which most of our modern languages are mostly compatible with, came about in '87. Long after COBOL had standardised itself on how numbers were expected to behave.
IEEE 754, which most of our modern languages are mostly compatible with, came about in '87. Long after COBOL had standardised itself on how numbers were expected to behave.