Making exponentiations efficient
Use floating point for exponentiations for large exponents to achieve faster evaluation and more accurate results.
For example, the first statement below is computed more quickly and accurately than the second statement:
COMPUTE fixed-point1 = fixed-point2 ** 100000.E+00
COMPUTE fixed-point1 = fixed-point2 ** 100000
A floating-point exponent causes floating-point arithmetic to be used to compute the exponentiation.