BigDecimal() issue

[aydeniz kirmizi]

private BigDecimal stakeContrib;

this.number = new BigDecimal(0.0075);

is returning 0.007499999999999999722444243843710864894092082977294921875

any idea why?

Thanks a lot.

[fred rosenberger]

because your literal of 0.0075 is first converted into a float, which are never precise.

[Rob Spoor]

aydeniz kirmizi wrote:this.number = new BigDecimal(0.0075);

On that line, the double is already inaccurate; see our Java Beginner's FAQ entry #20.

The solution is very simple - use a String to create the BigDecimal:

this.number = new BigDecimal("0.0075");

[Rob Spoor]

fred rosenberger wrote:because your literal of 0.0075 is first converted into a float, which are never precise.

Actually it remains a double, but your point is still valid.

[aydeniz kirmizi]

Thanks a lot, fixed..

[fred rosenberger]

Rob Spoor wrote:Actually it remains a double, but your point is still valid.

my bad...doing too many things at once...perhaps should have said "floating decimal point type"...or just 'a double'.

[aydeniz kirmizi]

Thanks for your help. I do have another question, the BigDecimals seem to be a bit complicated.

    public static void main(String[] args){
        BigDecimal myDecimal = new BigDecimal("0.0075");
        BigDecimal second = new BigDecimal("100");
        String newNumber= null;
        newNumber = (myDecimal.multiply(second)).toString();
        System.out.println(newNumber);
    }

this is printing me out 0.7500 , but the value I want to get is 0.75. Any suggestion for that?

thanks

[aydeniz kirmizi]

got it!

setScale(2)

but if there is a better option you can suggest, would be hallpy.
Thanks

[Joanne Neal]

String.format can be used to format numbers in a String but I'm not sure if it works with BigDecimals.

[Jesper de Jong]

Yes, String.format also works with BigDecimal:

BigDecimal n = new BigDecimal("0.0075");
String text = String.format("%.4f", n);

It uses the decimal separator of your default locale though, so in my case I get "0,0075" (with a comma instead of a dot). If you want always a dot you can specify for example to use the US locale:

BigDecimal n = new BigDecimal("0.0075");
String text = String.format(Locale.US, "%.4f", n);

[Jesper de Jong]

aydeniz kirmizi wrote:but if there is a better option you can suggest, would be hallpy.

BigDecimal also has a stripTrailingZeroes method:

BigDecimal n = new BigDecimal("0.7500");
System.out.println(n);   // prints 0.7500

BigDecimal p = n.stripTrailingZeros();
System.out.println(p);   // prints 0.75

[aydeniz kirmizi]

when using "stripTrailingZeros()", it is strange but for instance for 0.5 value it displays 5E+1, for 0.1 it displays 1E+1.
What a pain!

          BigDecimal = new BigDecimal("0.5"); // the number I get from the db
         String aa = (bigDec.multiply(BigDecimal.valueOf(100)).stripTrailingZeros()).toString();

I want this to be displayed as it is. I mean when I multiply a value with 100, I just want to get whatever the result is. setScale(2) is not working too, because if I had something like 0.0562 it throws exception, because the scale is forced to be 2.

[Dennis Deems]

aydeniz kirmizi wrote:setScale(2) is not working too, because if I had something like 0.0562 it throws exception, because the scale is forced to be 2.

The exception is thrown because you haven't told the BigDecimal how it should handle the excess values. You need to supply a rounding mode to the setScale method. The javadoc is quite clear about this.

Note that if you require a consistent number of decimal places, use setScale and not stripTrailingZeros, because it will pad or round to the desired number of places. If you don't want a fixed number of decimal places, then you shouldn't be using setScale at all.

[Winston Gutkowski]

aydeniz kirmizi wrote:when using "stripTrailingZeros()", it is strange but for instance for 0.5 value it displays 5E+1, for 0.1 it displays 1E+1.
What a pain!

Nothing to do with stripTrailingZeros(), but I agree that it's a pain: The only example I can ever remember of Java changing the way a method works from one release to another.

What you want is toPlainString(), not toString().

Winston

[aydeniz kirmizi]

Hey,

Thanks a lot for sharing your knowladge. toPlainString(), is ersolved my issue.