Re: Documentation says DECIMAL is floating-point but it is fixed-point

[Kloppenburg Ernst (FV/FLI) *]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2001 at 06:06:22 -0600, Benjamin David Hildred wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 20, 2001 at 11:08:47AM +0200, Ernst Kloppenburg wrote:
> > >Description:
> >     with DECIMAL the number of digits before and after the decimal
> > point is fixed. Thus it should be described in the documentation as a
> > fixed point number
> > >How-To-Repeat:
> the manual is correct. the number is stored internaly as a floating point number 
>with all of its benifets and drawbacks. formating information is only used when the 
>number is retrieved. if a number is stored in atable with more significant digets 
>than the coulum will alow, and the table is later restructured to show aditional 
>precision, the number will show mour preciosion. try it.

Hello,

did you maybe mix this up with "DOUBLE(M,D)"? DOUBLE is of course stored
as a float and M and D control the display at retrieval of a number.

For DECIMAL the manual says

    the number is stored as a string, using one character for each
    digit of the value. The decimal point and, for negative numbers,
    the `-' sign, are not counted in M (but space for these are
    reserved). If D is 0, values will have no decimal point or
    fractional part. The maximum range of DECIMAL values is the same
    as for DOUBLE, but the actual range for a given DECIMAL column may
    be constrained by the choice of M and D.

I still think this sounds like *storing* in a fixed point format.

E. Kloppenburg



-- 
Dr. Ernst Kloppenburg
Robert Bosch GmbH, Abt. FV/FLI
Tel. 0711/811-6739, BCN 9020-6739

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