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Storing trailing zeros in mantissa

From: Norman Dunbar <Norman.Dunbar_at_lfs.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 09:58:17 +0100
Message-ID: <E2F6A70FE45242488C865C3BC1245DA703FCB4A8@lnewton.leeds.lfs.co.uk>


Morning Xho,

>> You and Norm clearly are not scientists!
True, but I have a subscription to New Scientist - does that help :o)

>> The difference between 10.2 and 1.02e1 is purely one of display, the
difference between
>> 10.2 and 10.20 is not, they differ in the number of significant
>> digits.

As you said, I'm not a scientinst, but I don't remember being taught that 10.2 is any different from 10.20 - unless you are thinking of heading down the rounding from 99.999 to 99.99 route ? (you know, 10.201 becomed 10.20 and so *is* different from 10.2 which is 10.2 ?)

>> 10.2 is somewhere around 10.15 to 10.25, whereas
>> 10.20 is somwhere around 10.195 to 10.205 and
>> 10.2000 is somewhere around 10.19995 to 10.20005
So, what you are saying is you want to store number which are 'around' 10.2 - I don't know any database that lets you specify an 'around' option :o(

>> The problem is that what "looks right" is the number of decimals that
>> were there, including trailing zeros, when the number was stored.
You need a VARCHAR2 then to store what was 'typed' and a number to store what it's value is.

Cheers,
Norm. (Not a scientist - honest !!)



Norman Dunbar
Database/Unix administrator
Lynx Financial Systems Ltd.
mailto:Norman.Dunbar_at_LFS.co.uk
Tel: 0113 289 6265
Fax: 0113 289 3146
URL: http://www.Lynx-FS.com
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Received on Mon Aug 04 2003 - 03:58:17 CDT

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