Re: DecimalField Problem

On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 1:44 PM, Erik Cederstrand <erik+lists@cederstrand.dk> wrote:

Den 08/01/2014 kl. 16.18 skrev Timothy W. Cook <tim@mlhim.org>:

 

> So, why doesn't it just store a zero?

Underneath a DecimalField there is a Python float type, and some equivalent float type in your database. Float values are an approximation, so 0.000000000000 and 0 are not guaranteed to be equal. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2986150/python-floating-number

But one would think that if Django calls it a decimal field, it would convert the float to decimal. 

I suppose I'll do that before writing it out to the file (an XML schema) so it really isn't a big deal, just surprising. 

BTW: it is stored in PostgreSQL as 0.0000000000 as a numeric. 

 

> In reality I need to allow the range of,  positive infinity to negative infinity.  But this doesn't seem possible.  Is it?

It's not physically or computationally possible. How will you store an infinite number of digits on a hard drive of finite size? :-)

Yeah, that was supposed to be sarcastic but it didn't come across well.  :-) 

 --Tim

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