Question

I am having trouble with large numbers in java while trying to store them in float variable.

import java.math.BigDecimal;
import java.text.DecimalFormat;

public class testConversion {


public static void main(String[] args) {

    String s = "135598877.50";

    Float f = Float.parseFloat(s);

    DecimalFormat df = new DecimalFormat("#0.00");

    System.out.println(f);
    System.out.println(df.format(f));

}

}

OUTPUT:

1.3559888E8

135598880.00

The output of this program is 135598880.00 and not 135598877.50.

Why this thing is happening and what is the best way of handling this? I don’t want truncation/rounding at all.

Regards,
Kaddy

Answer 1

floats are stored using IEE 754. They cannot store large numbers precisely.

As you hinted in the question, you need to use BigDecimal.