Re: numeric/decimal docs bug?

Jan Wieck wrote:
> > Oh, interesting, maybe we should just leave it alone.
>
> As said, I have to look at the code. I'm pretty sure that it
> currently will not use hundreds of digits internally if you
> use only a few digits in your schema. So changing it isn't
> that dangerous.
>
> But who's going to write and run a regression test, ensuring
> that the new high limit can really be supported. I didn't
> even run the numeric_big test lately, which tests with 500
> digits precision at least ... and therefore takes some time
> (yawn). Increasing the number of digits used you first have
> to have some other tool to generate the test data (I
> originally used bc(1) with some scripts). Based on that we
> still claim that our system deals correctly with up to 1,000
> digits precision.
>
> I don't like the idea of bumping up that number to some
> higher nonsense, claiming we support 32K digits precision on
> exact numeric, and noone ever tested if natural log really
> returns it's result in that precision instead of a 30,000
> digit precise approximation.
>
> I missed some of the discussion, because I considered the
> 1,000 digits already beeing complete nonsense and dropped the
> thread. So could someone please enlighten me what the real
> reason for increasing our precision is? AFAIR it had
> something to do with the docs. If it's just because the docs
> and the code aren't in sync, I'd vote for changing the docs.

Jan, if the numeric code works on 100 or 500 digits, could it break with
10,000 digits. Is there a reason to believe longer digits could cause
problems not present in shorter tests?

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