Question

I have two numbers, 1.4350 and 1.4300. When I subtract them, instead of returning 0.0050, I’m looking to get 50. It also needs to work with 90.25 and 90.10, returning 15.

Answer 1

You can use BigDecimal.unscaledValue(). This will return what you want as a BigInteger.

// Two example numbers:
BigDecimal val0 = new BigDecimal("1.4350");
BigDecimal val1 = new BigDecimal("1.4300");


// This might be a method:

if (val0.scale() != val1.scale())
    throws new IllegalArgumentException("Scales are not the same!");

BigDecimal subtr = val0.subtract(val1);
System.out.println(subtr); // Prints 0.0050

BigInteger unscaled = subtr.unscaledValue();
System.out.println(unscaled); // Prints 50