Re: Question about the TODO, numerics, and division

"Tom Lane" <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:

> but I wouldn't want to defend the details of the rule about how many
> fractional digits out given so many fractional digits in.

In particular it seems to me this is poor:

postgres=# select 1::numeric/10;
?column?
------------------------
0.10000000000000000000
(1 row)

In an ideal world it seems to me that if you're dividing by a number with only
factors of 2 and 5 you should only gain as many digits as necessary to
represent the result exactly.

At the very least if you're dividing by a power of ten we should just move the
decimal place and keep the same overall precision.

--
Gregory Stark
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com