Re: numeric/decimal docs bug?

Tom Lane wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> > Tom Lane writes:
> > #define NUMERIC_MAX_PRECISION 1000
> >>
> >> I was thinking just the other day that there's no reason for that
> >> limit to be so low. Jan, couldn't we bump it up to 8 or 16K or so?
>
> > Why have an arbitrary limit at all? Set it to INT_MAX,
>
> The hard limit is certainly no more than 64K, since we store these
> numbers in half of an atttypmod. In practice I suspect the limit may
> be less; Jan would be more likely to remember...

It is arbitrary of course. I don't recall completely, have to
dig into the code, but there might be some side effect when
mucking with it.

The NUMERIC code increases the actual internal precision when
doing multiply and divide, what happens a gazillion times
when doing higher functions like trigonometry. I think there
was some connection between the max precision and how high
this internal precision can grow, so increasing the precision
might affect the computational performance of such higher
functions significantly.

Jan

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