Question

I’ve got a column for storing float data, i.e.

1.1
11.60
4.23

Unfortunately, 11.60 gets stored as 11.6. I need it to have that extra zero. Do I have to change my datatype to varchar? What’s the best way to handle this?

Answer 1

It sounds from the comments that you’re storing a product code, so float isn’t a good choice for a datatype, as you suggest. Indeed it’s not a rendering issue, but we’d misconstrued it from your initial choice of float (thinking you indeed were storing something like money or true decimal).

Go with varchar, as you suspected, as it really is a string value.

Here’s how you can do that:

• create a new column of type varchar(100) or whatever length is suitable for you
• copy the values into the new column from your float column

ALTER TABLE MyTable ADD MyNewColumn VARCHAR(100);

UPDATE MyTable
SET MyNewColumn = FORMAT(MyFloatColumn, 2);