Do you just need to be able to roundtrip between 'decimal' and String without losing precision? Or have it mapped automatically to some Java type on the back end without losing precision? Gordon Smith Adobe Flex SDK Team
________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ralf Bokelberg Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 11:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Request for feedback on decimal math 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] <mailto:gosmith%40adobe.com> > 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
