Re: [HACKERS] Floating point error

Daniel Farina <daniel@heroku.com> wrote:

> This kind of change may have many practical problems that may
> make it un-pragmatic to alter at this time (considering the
> workaround is to set the extra float digits), but I can't quite
> grasp the rationale for "well, the only program that cares about
> the most precision available is pg_dump".  It seems like most
> programs would care just as much.

Something to keep in mind is that when you store 0.01 into a double
precision column, the precise value stored, when written in
decimal, is:

0.01000000000000000020816681711721685132943093776702880859375

Of course, some values can't be precisely written in decimal with
so few digits.

--
Kevin Grittner
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company