In Zimbabwe the announcement of plans for a new one hundred trillion dollar bill ($100,000,000,000,000.00) highlighted interesting, but not unsolvable, software problems.

The $100 trillion bill would have been worth about US $30, had it been issued.

One wonders what was done in Zimbabwe regarding computer software for business and finance.

An approach to dealing with devaluation of currency is to move the decimal point to the left. So 1000.00 would become 100.00, and so on.

Writers of computer software for the ages may want to give additional consideration to accuracy in financial calculations, especially when dealing with large transactions in currencies that could be subject to inflation.

For example, some software data types named "currency" extend to + or - 922 trillion, with 4 digits after the decimal point. In Zimbabwe, that would have been able to handle exact transactions up to about US $350.

Calculation of percentages and interest may require additional accuracy beyond a single transaction amount. That effect may cripple software products that do accounting for amounts as little as $1 billion, or less.

Switching from existing "currency" data types to long, or very long, integers is a consideration.

As for Zimbabwe, use of Zimbabwean currency was suspended in April 2009. The Zimbabweans used other countries' currencies.

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