Re: floating point representation

Tom Lane wrote:
>
> Hiroshi Inoue <Inoue(at)tpf(dot)co(dot)jp> writes:
> > The 7.1-release seems near.
> > May I provide the followings ?
> > SET FLOAT4_PRECISION TO ..
> > SET FLOAT8_PRECISION TO ..
>
> > Or must we postpone to fix it ?
>
> This seems a small enough change that I do not fear fixing it at this
> late date. However, I do not like the idea of making the SET variables
> be just number of digits precision. As long as we're going to have SET
> variables, let's go for the full flexibility offered by sprintf: define
> the SET variables as the sprintf format strings to use.

Agreed.

> The defaults
> would be "%.7g" and "%.17g" (or thereabouts, not sure what number of
> digits we are currently using).

Wouldn't changing current '%.6g','%.15g'(on many platforms)
cause the regression test failure ?

> This way, someone could select the C99
> %a format if he knew that his libc supported it. Or he could force a
> particular format like %7.3f if that's what he needed in a specific
> application.
>

Regards,
Hiroshi Inoue