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Unconvinced? You insist that in your account system everything is perfectly ok?Īssets and liabilities equal? Ok, then take each of the given formatted numbers of each entry, parse them and sum them with an independent decimal system!Ĭompare that with the formatted sum.
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It gets hopeless if you want decimal round-to-even handling with binary numbers. Given that the result of floating point computations always contain small error terms, the decision is pure luck. You may know that it means 5 cent, but the the computer does not know that and rounds 0.4999. So it does matter if the result isĮither 0.049999999999. So you end up with a number either higher or lower than the given decimal number. Many of the fractional binary parts can never equal the exact decimal representation.Īny binary number can be written as m/2^n ( m, n positive integers), any decimal number as m/(2^n*5^n).Īs binaries lack the prime factor 5, all binary numbers can be exactly represented by decimals, but not vice versa. Should Float or Decimal data type be used for dollar amounts?įloats were according to IEEE 754 always binary, only the new standard IEEE 754R defined decimal formats.
Server checkbook pro#
10.2 or 10.2546)Ī pro is the float-only approach takes up eight bytes on disk where the decimal would take up nine bytes (decimal 12,2). I noticed a few times where this was not done and the amounts did not look correct. It sounds like you will have to round the amount to two decimal positions.Īnother con is all displays and printed amounts have to have a format statement that shows two decimal positions. One con mentioned in our daily scrum was you have to be careful when you calculate an amount that returns a result that is over two decimal positions. What are some of the pros and cons for either? Should the float or decimal data type be used for dollar amounts? The legacy system language, I programmed in, did not have a float, so I probably would have used a decimal. Most of the system is already completed with the dollar amounts using floats. We are rewriting our legacy accounting system in VB.NET and SQL Server.