Bad BigDecimal

Reply-To: sender

Hi.  I'm having a problem with the JDBC driver.  It's excellent for
the most part - kudos to Mr. Mount - and this is the first problem
I've run into.  I think there's a bug; read below for my explanation
and (I think) the fix.

The problem:  When I call getBigDecimal() on a ResultSet, it
sometimes throws an exception:
 Bad BigDecimal 174.50   at org.postgresql.jdbc2.ResultSet.getBigDecimal(ResultSet.java:373)   at
org.postgresql.jdbc2.ResultSet.getBigDecimal(ResultSet.java:984)  ...blah blah blah...
org.postgresql.util.PSQLException:Bad BigDecimal 174.50
 

I think the problem is on line 984 of
org/postgresql/jdbc2/ResultSet.java.  Here's the method I'm looking at
(slightly reformatted to fit in this e-mail message):
 public java.math.BigDecimal getBigDecimal(int columnIndex)     throws SQLException   {     // Now must call BigDecimal
witha scale otherwise JBuilder     // barfs     return getBigDecimal(columnIndex,0);   }
 

Notice that it's calling getBigDecimal(int, int) with a 0 for the
second argument.  Here's the source of that method (again, slightly
reformatted):
 public BigDecimal getBigDecimal(int columnIndex, int scale)     throws SQLException   {     String s =
getFixedString(columnIndex);    BigDecimal val;
 
     if (s != null)       {
         try           {             val = new BigDecimal(s);           } catch (NumberFormatException e) {
thrownew PSQLException("postgresql.res.badbigdec",s);           }         if (scale==-1) return val;         try
  {             return val.setScale(scale);           } catch (ArithmeticException e) {             throw new
PSQLException("postgresql.res.badbigdec",s);          }       }     return null;              // SQL NULL   }
 

Okay.  The fact that the default scale is 0 causes essentially
the following to happen: BigDecimal val; val = new BigDecimal("174.50"); return val.setScale(0);

This causes an exception because 174.50 can't be exactly represented
by a BigDecimal that has scale 0.

The fix:  change the appropriate line to read: return getBigDecimal(columnIndex, -1);

I'm sure I'm probably overlooking something; please let me know...
Also, please copy me on replies!  Thanks!

-- 
Thanks in advance,
Jason Orendorff
freelance programmer