One important usecase is the possibility to communicate with a backend without loosing precision.
Cheers Ralf. On Dec 13, 2007 6:07 AM, Gordon Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > The next version of ECMAScript will probably have a 'decimal' datatype for > doing decimal math. Using this datatype, 0.3 + 0.7 would be exactly 1.0, not > something like 0.9999999999999997 as you currently get due to conversion > from decimal to binary fractions. > > This datatype would probably support additional precision as well. Number > only gives you 15 or 16 signficant digits. But if you had, say, 34, you > could represent up to $99,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999.99 > exactly, and that's pretty large! > > The Player team is thinking about how to introduce a type like this even > before the ECMAScript spec is complete, hopefully in a way that will be > compatible with the spec. They'd like to gather some input on developers' > requirements for decimal math. Some questions to think about are... > > What is your use case? Financial calculations? Scientific calculations? > > Are you mainly interested in calculating with decimal rather than binary > fractions, or in having more significant digits, or are both important? > > Do you need support for an arbitrary number of significant digits (i.e., > "infinite precision")? > > If not, how many significant digits are sufficient? > > Do you need programmatic control over how much precision is used in > calculations (e.g., rounding to 5 decimal places in every intermediate > operation)? > > Do you need programmatic control over how rounding works? (Round down, round > up, round to nearest, what happens with 1.5, etc.) > > Do you care about whether a new type like 'decimal' gets automatically > coerced to other types like Number, int, and uint? > > - Gordon
