RE: BigDecimal

     We ran into this problem in a few places.  Usually it because we are
dealing with a legacy application where the leading zeros were important.
In all cases we switched to Java Strings since this type better represented
the data we need to handle.  For instance, we had account numbers where
leading zeros are important.  On the Java side we just call them account ids
objects and used a string that was limited to the chars 0..9 to store the
value.   Politically, there were some that thought account number should be
a "number".  However, in our case the account 00001 is not equal to the
account 001, which meant that account numbers where not mathematical numbers
and thus did not match any Java type.  The OO solution was to create new
type "account id" which internally held the value as a String.

      A similar problem also occurs with leading blanks when using a GUI.
Some of our legacy application required leading blanks.  However, leading
blanks do not show up well in a GUI environment.  This problem is harder to
solve and we solve it on a case by case bases.  Sometimes we write new
components and controls (in a Swing environment) and sometimes we change the
legacy application.  

/Tim


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gibbons, Michael [SMTP:bmis04@MARYWOOD1.MARYWOOD.EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 7:11 AM
> To:   'Java-L'
> Subject:      BigDecimal
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Is there a way to stop BigDecimal from stripping out leading zeros ?
> 
> Thanks in Advance !
> 
> Michael P. Gibbons
> Manager of Programming & Technical Services 
> MARYWOOD UNIVERSITY
> 2300 Adams Ave. 
> Scranton, PA 18509
> 
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