Decimal precision seems limited

I got a quick answer from support, this is what I learned:

The value is indeed stored as a double precision floating point value. However, the full value will not usually be displayed, for example in a text field.

You can use a!floatingpointfield() to show the full value. More info here: docs.appian.com/.../Floating_Point_Component.html

For example:
a!floatingpointfield(
readOnly: true,
label:"Floating Point value",
value: todecimal(1.2345678901234567)
)

This code will show the full value. Note that it is not necessary to use todecimal() but I put it here to show that todecimal() does in fact store the full value.

Hi

Thanks for the info. My next question is: How can I display decimal amounts in a paging grid - without the amounts being rounded to 7 significant digits?

You can use TEXT function to show the decimal number in Paging Grid

text(-3.4343243,"+0000.#######;-0000.#######")

Using fixed() is also a good option for this requirement: docs.appian.com/.../fnc_text_fixed.html

It looks like fixed() isn't super accurate.  Am I doing something wrong?

text(
 266879.39999999997 / 60,
 "#.####"
)

outputs: "4447.9899"

whereas,

fixed(
 266879.39999999997 / 60,
 4,
 true
)

outputs: "4447.9900"

Any ideas?

I'm pretty sure the result that fixed() has returned is actually correct, as strange as it seems! Remember that rounding from the 5th decimal place bumps the next digit to the left up by one and sets the current digit to 0. This cascades to the left until a digit is able to be incremented by one without affecting the next digit along; you wouldn't expect 44.99 rounded to 0 decimal places to be 44 just because you've got to the right number of decimal places, right? :)

That's not a very good explanation... but plug 4447.989999999998 into any rounding calculator on the web and you'll find it comes back with 4447.9900.

The text() result is a good example of the way that text truncates rather than rounds!

Ah, yep that's fair, sorry.

Ah, yep that's fair, sorry.