7 decimal digits precision for real

Started by PG Bug reporting formalmost 6 years ago2 messagesdocs
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#1PG Bug reporting form
noreply@postgresql.org

The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:

Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/datatype-numeric.html
Description:

When I try to run
`insert into employees (r_id) values (3.919192199);`
where r_id is of type real, I see it stores as 3.9191923 and not 6.
Am I understanding anything wrong ? isn't the range specified is 6 digits
precision?

#2Bruce Momjian
bruce@momjian.us
In reply to: PG Bug reporting form (#1)
Re: 7 decimal digits precision for real

On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 10:31:49PM +0000, PG Doc comments form wrote:

The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:

Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/datatype-numeric.html
Description:

When I try to run
`insert into employees (r_id) values (3.919192199);`
where r_id is of type real, I see it stores as 3.9191923 and not 6.
Am I understanding anything wrong ? isn't the range specified is 6 digits
precision?

Those extra digits are not guaraneteed to be precise, but usually are
close to accurate, so we include, them. You can diable that with
extra_float_digits = 0:

SELECT '3.919192199'::real;
float4
-----------
3.9191923

SHOW extra_float_digits;
extra_float_digits
--------------------
1

SET extra_float_digits = 0;
SELECT '3.919192199'::real;
float4
---------
3.91919

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> https://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB https://enterprisedb.com

The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee