Re: [HACKERS] IEEE 754

On Jan 4, 2004, at 6:51 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Michael Glaesemann wrote:
>>
>> On Dec 29, 2003, at 11:28 AM, Sai Hertz And Control Systems wrote:
>>> I would like to share my concerns about the IEEE 754 specification
>>> and
>>> floating point handling by PostgreSQL .
>>
>> What specifically are your concerns regarding floating point handling
>> and PostgreSQL? I'm not in a position to address your concerns, but I
>> would like to know what they are.
>
> Floating point math itself is not precise, but rather an approximation,
> usually of 8 or 14 digits.  You can't approximate money.  This isn't a
> PostgreSQL issue but rather a general programming issue.

Thanks, Bruce. I assume the arbitrary precision arithmetic Jan
mentioned which is used for the NUMERIC type takes care of this.

Michael Glaesemann
grzm myrealbox com