base conversion performance

[David Keaton]

>[David Hough]
>Actually I don't know of any realistic applications in which the time
>to print out the answers is comparable to the time to compute them,
>although I have heard that this is still true in beginning Fortran
>computer programming courses in engineering schools.

     Don't write it off that easily.  VS Aero and VS 1000, programs
that design the keels of ships, spend over half their time writing out
answers on some machines.  I am sure there are others; these just leap
to mind immediately.