Re: Data Type for Money

Carlos Mennens <carlos(dot)mennens(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> Thanks. I just for some reason can't see or understand the difference
> between 'decimal' & 'numeric'. Why have two data types for the same
> values? Am I missing something?

There isn't any difference, in Postgres. There are two type names
because the SQL standard requires us to accept both names. In a quick
look in the standard it appears that the only difference is this:

17)NUMERIC specifies the data type exact numeric, with the decimal
precision and scale specified by the <precision> and <scale>.

18)DECIMAL specifies the data type exact numeric, with the decimal
scale specified by the <scale> and the implementation-defined
decimal precision equal to or greater than the value of the
specified <precision>.

ie, for DECIMAL the implementation is allowed to allow more digits than
requested to the left of the decimal point. Postgres doesn't exercise
that freedom so there's no difference between these types for us.

regards, tom lane