Some languages have arbitrary precision types or use BCD. Next time you see some...

icebraining · on Jan 13, 2013

Python has Decimal for that. Unfortunately, the people who wrote the platform I use - which deals with money - decided they're "too slow".

masklinn · on Jan 14, 2013

> Unfortunately, the people who wrote the platform I use - which deals with money - decided they're "too slow".

I've had the same problem (that platform wouldn't ha. It's… annoying (also bullshit: in the worst case — CPython <= 3.2 — basic arithmetic operations will take ~20µs on my machine aside from divisions which take a bit more and if that shows up in profiling use cdecimal, CPython 3.3 [integrated cdecimal] or pypy)

ars · on Jan 14, 2013

If you don't have decimal types, then use fixed point. Or in simpler terms store cents (as integers) not dollars (as floats).

Then add a decimal point when you display.

If you are dealing with stocks or interest I suggest storing tenths, or hundreds of a cent to avoid rounding errors.

brazzy · on Jan 14, 2013

Shitty when your language doesn't have integers then, eh?

ars · on Jan 14, 2013

Javascript floats (all 64 bit floats actually) can store exact integers to 53 bits.

Which is enough for even the united states national budget, let alone more prosaic uses.

derleth · on Jan 14, 2013

> Next time you see someone using floating point types for money

... apply that logic to their paycheck and let them deal with being underpaid by a bizarre amount because of rounding.

Or apply it to their investment accounts so the errors accumulate for a few decades.

Nothing like an object lesson to remedy bad behavior.