why does this happen?

[Jeremy Watts]

i have declared a Java BigDecimal as being '0.0007' (not really that big a
decimal, but this is just an example) , and then converted this to a string.

On printing out the string I receive '0.00069999999999999288......'
(followed by a load more numbers). Why isnt it simply returning '0.0007' ?


Jeremy

 

[Ingo R. Homann]

Hi Jeremy,

i have declared a Java BigDecimal as being '0.0007' (not really that big a
decimal, but this is just an example) , and then converted this to a string.

How did you declare it?

new BigDecimal(0.0007)

will not work, because 0.0007 in the code above is a double which has a
limited precision. Have you tried

new BigDecimal("0.0007")

?

Ciao,
Ingo

 

[Thomas Weidenfeller]

On printing out the string I receive '0.00069999999999999288......'
(followed by a load more numbers). Why isnt it simply returning '0.0007' ?

This is described in the API documentation in great length. Please read
it. The precision of floating point numbers have also been discussed
here ad nauseam. You might want to search an archive of this group.

/Thomas

 

[Jeremy Watts]

Hi Jeremy,

string.

How did you declare it?

new BigDecimal(0.0007)

will not work, because 0.0007 in the code above is a double which has a
limited precision. Have you tried

new BigDecimal("0.0007")

yeah ingo, that worked great thanks

 

[Roedy Green]

i have declared a Java BigDecimal as being '0.0007' (not really that big a
decimal, but this is just an example) , and then converted this to a string.

On printing out the string I receive '0.00069999999999999288......'
(followed by a load more numbers). Why isnt it simply returning '0.0007' ?

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/floatingpoint.html