Richard Wackerbarth wrote:
>
> On Fri, 16 Jun 2000, Rob Browning wrote:
>
> > So far, from everything everyone's said. I can't see one place where
> > switching to some home-grown fixed point solution for the actual
> > representation has *any* advantage over sticking with 64-bit floating
> > point.
>
> > The issue of when we need to round our values, and to what extent is
> > AFAICT a *completely* separable issue from whether or not we represent
> > them as floating point internally.
>
> > So yes there may be times we need to round, but that's not related to
> > whether or not we use doubles as the underlying representation,
>
> I agree that the underlying representation is not the problem.
> The problem is that people are bypassing the class wrapper and doing
> operations directly on these values. It is this misuse which is the problem.
>
> For example, if I add up a series of 10,000 transactions, I must convert the
> intermediate results back to "exact" money so that the error does not
> accumulate.
>
> > I suspect that most often the "rounding" will be done by hand because
> > you'll be entering the values yourself. If the groccery sells apples
> > 3/dollar and you buy two, you'll get charged $0.67, and that's what
> > you'll enter into gnucash.
>
> Well, gnucash is already messing up my brokerage account because of its
> mishandling of shares, prices, and amounts
>
> Remember that accounting is a COUNTING
> and counting is done in integers
>
When bankers first used mainframes, some slick programmers established
"hidden accounts" which received the tinsy fractional part of the
interest, the part lost when rounding DOWN to integer pennies ...
It wasn't much, but as it happen at the end of every day, on every
savings account ... they made money for themselves. A case of one
procedure for me, another for all the rest of you. :-)
Another test:
Try to verify the finance charges on your credit card statement(s).
See if they all come up with exactly the same result for a data-set of
scattered daily purchases ??
--
Gnucash Developer's List
To unsubscribe send empty email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
