> Well, I suppose rounding by the dictionary's definition can mean any kind > of approximation to a number of less significant digits, so I see your > point.
To be a bit philosophical about it, yes. Rounding is always a matter of losing information (e.g. precision), and you can never tell in what "direction" the information was lost. Ex: The number '2' I now have, was it - to be extreme - it '1,1' (a sealing function) or was it '2,9' (a floor function) before? You can never really tell... > But by the popular vernacular and by the default precision for any > programming language's "round" function that I've encountered (including > PHP's), the default precision is to round to the nearest integer. Which integer is "nearest" for 1,5? 1 or 2? To round a decimal number is not as straight forward as it might appear in the first case. Anybody who happens to know what Kunts Handbook says in this issue? > Thus, by > both of these modest leaps of assumption, normal rounding to me is rounding > to the nearest integer. I agree that most rounding functions probably performs a sealing function when the less significant decimal is >5 and a floor function when it is <5. But what is a normal behavior when it is ==5 ??? In the bitter end this choice is up to the API writers own whim, but in most case I guess (s)he ignore this case, and I would guess that most rounding function then perform a floor function in the case of ==5 (????). The point I want to make is this: You'll never know until you tested it! Because of this I believe it a bit ambiguous to say "normal" since it hardly can't exist a "normal" way to perform a rounding. Or?? Secondly, because of this "phenomena" some programmers might frequently find them self having to answers question from customer like: "Why does we miss $xxxx in this last summary report?". > At 11:50 AM 4/9/2002 +0200, Svensson, B.A.T. (HKG) wrote: > > > That will round down to 2 decimal places. To round to the nearest 2 > > > decimal places, to what Ross said but instead of getting the absolute > > > value, just round it normally. > > > >What's "normal" rounding?????? > -- PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
