Groups > comp.lang.java.programmer > #14270

Re: Sorting numeric strings

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From	Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject	Re: Sorting numeric strings
Date	Fri, 04 May 2012 14:19:51 -0700
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On Fri, 4 May 2012 20:01:50 +0000 (UTC), Martin Gregorie
<martin@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote:

[snip]

>I think you'll find that using floating point for financial amounts was 
>an abberation introduced by programmers on early 8 and 16 bit micros who  
>wrote financial packages in BASIC.

     I suspect that it raised its head on earlier systems that did not
have COBOL or another language with decimal arithmetic.

     With JavaScript, short of writing a fixed-point library, you have
to use floating point since JavaScript has only one numeric type,
namely IEEE 754 64-bit floating point.  If you restrict your
arithmetic such that calculations result only in integer values in
range, you are safe.  I have done proof-of-concept on this, and it
does work.

>Early mainframes stored currency values as binary or BCD integers and all 
>modern systems should do the same

     The details are the killer.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Thread

Sorting numeric strings Ben <no@way.com> - 2012-04-30 21:27 -0400
  Re: Sorting numeric strings Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-04-30 21:39 -0400
  Re: Sorting numeric strings Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-05-01 10:30 -0700
  Re: Sorting numeric strings Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2012-05-01 10:53 -0700
    Re: Sorting numeric strings Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-05-01 14:50 -0700
      Re: Sorting numeric strings Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2012-05-01 15:02 -0700
        Re: Sorting numeric strings Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-05-02 14:36 -0700
          Re: Sorting numeric strings Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-05-02 19:57 -0700
          Re: Sorting numeric strings Dr J R Stockton <reply1218@merlyn.demon.co.uk.not.invalid> - 2012-05-03 19:41 +0100
            Re: Sorting numeric strings Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-05-03 17:40 -0700
              Re: Sorting numeric strings Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-05-03 18:11 -0700
                Re: Sorting numeric strings Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2012-05-04 20:01 +0000
                Re: Sorting numeric strings Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-05-04 14:19 -0700
                Re: Sorting numeric strings Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2012-05-04 23:36 +0000
                Re: Sorting numeric strings Dr J R Stockton <reply1218@merlyn.demon.co.uk.not.invalid> - 2012-05-06 17:50 +0100
                Re: Sorting numeric strings Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-05-07 10:34 -0700
                Re: Sorting numeric strings Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2012-05-07 12:38 -0500
                Re: Sorting numeric strings glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-05-07 17:48 +0000
                Re: Sorting numeric strings Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-05-07 11:42 -0700
  Re: Sorting numeric strings Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-05-01 13:38 -0700

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