On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 3:19 AM, Cesare Di Mauro
But working with financial applications, using decimal numerics is a very common practice. Even if implementation is slow, we prefer exact results over speed: there must be no possibility on failing calculations when we are manipulating moneys.
This has always bothered me: the suggestion that decimal *floats* are suitable for financial calculations, when fixed point is what you want. However, I now see some FAQ entries in http://docs.python.org/library/decimal.html that show how to get fixed point behaviour out of it. Including a wrapper around multiply and divide, for ease of use, heh. Regardless, although financial use cases are important, their behaviour is not universal. The next country over or a few years down the road may have different rules, different proportions, etc. Not something we want to hardcode. -- Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus