[This message was posted by Kent Paul Dolan of retired software engineer <[email protected]> to the "FIXML" discussion forum at http://fixprotocol.org/discuss/7. You can reply to it on-line at http://fixprotocol.org/discuss/read/cf7d4728 - PLEASE DO NOT REPLY BY MAIL.]
> Can anyone give guidance on whether the FIXML > Percentage data type can contain negative as well > as positive values? I found this entry in a 2003 > posting: > http://fixprotocol.org/discuss/read/bf588fba but > it doesn't look like it was followed up on, and > the spec (at least via FIXimate) doesn't say > either. > My assumption is that as it is of base type float, > that both negative and positive values between 1 > and -1 respectively are valid, but I'd be happy to > be corrected. Base float type? I suspect that a larger issue is being ignored here. Apparently it has been deliberately ignored for quite some period of time, if there's a 2003 date on a prior mention. Use of floating point binary encoding where fixed point decimal value encoding is intended is a raging disaster, for too many reasons to list easily, but "skimming fractional rounding errors" should raise a red flag, as should "no exact representation". Speaking from 4.5 years experience in an ANSI standards effort... Rather than trying to reinvent, badly, wheels already invented and refined elsewhere, FIX should instead model its numeric entities on tried and true ones, say, those from the COBOL community, which has been doing number handling right for the business community for many decades now. End of my comments. xanthian. "Great programmers write great code. Genius programmers adapt great code." [You can unsubscribe from this discussion group by sending a message to mailto:[email protected]] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Financial Information eXchange" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/fix-protocol?hl=en.
