We ran up against a rounding "problem" in
Java which we were unaware of. We have since discovered that if we want exact results we need to use the BigDecimal API or we could use int or long if we want to keep track of the decimal (look at Joshua Bloch's item #31 in "Effective Java").
However, my post isn't technical, per se. We (there's 2 of us at my job who are really curious about this) are surprised at the dearth of literature concerning this topic and was wondering if we were somehow snoozing during the beginner's coverage on the Sun site or if they only talk about this problem in formal classes or ??? I would think this topic would be covered extensively in a beginner's guide under their "gotcha's section"? Are there any other gotcha's (besides what Joshua Bloch uncovers in his book) one should be aware of?
Could someone explain why there is little written about this topic?
Thanks in advance for enlightening me.
Janet
P.S.-I thought it was funny that at the JavaOne 2003 conference they are offering a session called: BigInteger, BigDecimal, and a Billion of digits of Pi (ts-1991)