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Re: [xsl] floor() and idiv

2008-11-06 15:13:02
   >> Gestalt gives 10, 10, 10.

   Andrew> So in Gestalt how do you determine when to use the
   Andrew> equivalent of BigDecimal in Java, or do you not need to
   Andrew> work about that sort of thing?

   Andrew> (In Java the result using standard division is
   Andrew> 9.999999999999998 which I guess just gets truncated to 9,
   Andrew> but using BigDecimal.divide() you get the correct 10)

I always use the equivalent of BigDecimal if I cannot guarantee to
avoid errors with INTEGER_64. I'm not sure how you can get a rounding
error with integer or decimal arithmetic - those constants are integer 
constants,
not doubles, in XPath 2.0. I believe that double arithmetic is
non-compliant. Anyway, I am far from au fait with Java myself, so i am
prepared to be surprised.

As far as I understand, which is not very far, it's a fundamental
problem with binary arithmetic.  The standard division technique is
fast but incurs this sort of problem, while the BigDecimal approach is
exact but much slower.  The standard approach is fine for the vast
majority of uses, but for times where you need to be exact (like
financial calculations) you have to use BigDecimal.

I think anyway... David C might enlighten us :)



-- 
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com
Kernow: http://kernowforsaxon.sf.net/

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