From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2004-05-13T04:23:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Major Addition Bug? (We have a winner!)

In article <10a4scd81rq1le3@corp.supernews.com>,
Michael Geary <Mike@DeleteThis.Geary.com> wrote:
>Phil Tomson wrote:
>> [Floating point imprecision seems] to present a major
>> problem if you want to deal with financial figures, for
>> example.  Are there any workarounds?
>
>Financial calculations aren't done in floating point. There are various
>number formats that are used, but they all boil down to some form of integer
>arithmetic. For example, fixed point decimal may be used, where the value
>$625.91 is represented as the integer 62591 with a scaling factor of two
>decimal places. In other words, the arithmetic is actually done in pennies,
>not dollars.
>
>-Mike
>



This seems to be the 100,000th post to Ruby-talk (at least the English 
version).

What has our player won?

BTW: Yes, doing financial calculations in pennies seems to make a lot of 
sense.

Phil