> Quoth Lex Spoon [mailto:lex at cc.gatech.edu] :
> "Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok at cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:
> > Many financial calculations *MAY* be done safely using 
> floating point.
> 
> Yes, but of course you need to count in cents, shillings, ore, or
> whatnot, which defeats the purpose most people have of using floating
> point to begin with: to get free support for things after the decimal
> point.
> 
> So, I think you would agree that people doing financial calculations
> should still default to using integers, even if their language has
> floating point numbers just begging to be used.  Such people *can* use
> floating point, but it is unlikely to help them, and it has gotchas
> involved.

I just remembered that many times banking calculations in the U.S. are
carried down to the 1/100th of a cent, i.e. 4 decimal places if the units
are dollars.  This makes it much easier to run out of precision.

> "Jarvis, Robert P. (Bob) (Contingent)" <bob.jarvis at timken.com> wrote:
> > Thank you!  Great paper.  Google found several references, including
> > 
> > 	http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html
> 	
> It is cool, and I'm reading it, but at a glance it leaves out the most
> important material: what a *programmer* should know about floating
> point.  For example, when should you use it?  And what gotchas are
> there?

Sounds like a great subject for a paper.

Bob Jarvis
Compuware @ Timken

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