From: "Peña, Botp" <botp@...>
Date: 2003-06-24T18:17:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Decimal builtin?



Holden Glova [mailto:dsafari@paradise.net.nz] wrote:

> > > > what is http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ref_c_bignum.html
> > > > or http://raa.ruby-lang.org/list.rhtml?name=bigfloat, no?
> > >
> > > Thanks for your reply Botp, but wouldn't this still be 
> susceptible 
> > > to rounding error?
> >
> > could you site an example so that our ruby friends/hackers can also 
> > help?
> >
> > > Signed,
> > > Holden Glova
> >
> > kind regards -botp
> 
> Actually funny you ask because I can't seem to make the float 
> class provide 
> rounding errors. I have been searching on the web but can't 
> seem to make Ruby 
> give me rounding errors. I was under the impressions that 
> floats where always 
> inaccurate, is this not the case in Ruby? The reason I ask is 
> because I am 
> working on a general Money class. Currently I am backing this 
> with a Fixnum 
> in cents, but would prefer to have some sort of decimal type 
> that doesn't put 
> a limit on 2 cent places. Very interesting indeed...

ah, money matters (or rather cents matters ;-). I, too, am paranoid of cents
and to _avoid_ them, I just do mult by 100 or 1000 (depends), then process,
then go back by dividing by 100 or 1000...

what is 100.00 divided by 3? In money/business matters, it could probably be
33.33 for each of the 3 and 0.01 for charity ;-)

Of course, you can then make your own class for this.. in Ruby, the limit is
the imagination :-)

I think many have done their own classes for this kind of problem... just
wait for some people's reply... 

> - -- 
> Signed,
> Holden Glova

kind regards -botp