Bruno Rodrigues Silva wrote:
Dear all.
The MySQL Manual inform that Decimal Data Type is used
for represent exact-number, but like Float Point Data
Type, Decimal use rounding case the fractional part is
not sufficient. Therefore, what the difference?
Hi Bruno,
FLOAT rounds as floating point and DECIMAL rounds as you would expect it
to. Floating point arithmetic is not exact and that's why they've called
DECIMAL an "exact packed decimal number" because apparently you can rely
on it's roundings.
The primary use for DECIMAL is money, where floating point would fail
miserably and produce lots of errors (money leak) at the end of the month.
As floating point arithmetic has it's own separated section on your
processor (unless you have a 386 or older computer) it would be *much*
faster than DECIMAL, so use it only if you are absolutely sure you need it.
cheers,
--renato
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