From: Robert Dober Date: 2007-02-23T03:17:32+09:00 Subject: Re: Numerical calculation returns string with DBI/Mysql On 2/22/07, Ken Bloom wrote: > When I run the following query in DBI/Mysql, I'm finding that DBI is > returning the rho column as a string (rather than a float), thus forcing me > to convert it to a float with to_f. (I lose precision because the string > only returns the result to three decimal places). Any idea why DBI/Mysql is > returning the result of a numerical calculation as a string? > > I'm running > mysql-5.0.34_alpha20070101-r61 > mysql-ruby-2.7.2 > ruby-dbi-0.0.21-r2 > ruby-1.8.5_p2 > on Gentoo. > > dbh.execute("select childcounts.name name, childcounts.count/ > parentcounts.count rho from parentcounts, childcounts where > parentcounts.left_key=childcounts.parent_left") > Hi Ken if this is an issue it is a MySQL issue I guess, concerning ruby, do you have a compelling reason not to write dbh.execute("select childcounts.name name, childcounts.count whatever, parentcounts.count rho from parentcounts, childcounts where parentcounts.left_key=childcounts.parent_left") and let the gem do the arithmetic? (performance maybe) Cheers Robert > -- > Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory. > Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology. > http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/ > > -- We have not succeeded in answering all of our questions. In fact, in some ways, we are more confused than ever. But we feel we are confused on a higher level and about more important things. -Anonymous