RE: Extract some numeric fields from a string

Scott is correct; that was my thinking. I remain disappointed that %Dec()
doesn't work similarly. (Yes, I understand about established code.)

I didn't see anything in the original post that implied the kinds of
precision "issues" you are discussing will be a problem. I also favored
float because there was no clear distinction on variable sizing, but point
taken.

Dennis Lovelady
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
--
"I know King Fu, Karate, and 47 other dangerous words."
-- Jo Ramos

I suspect the reason Dennis was using atof() is because it'll read the
number up til it finds a non-numeric character, and return the numeric
portion.

By contrast, %DEC will simply back an exception, and return nothing
when it encounters non-numeric data. So you have to add code to find
the non-numeric data, and strip out only the part you want. In that
way,
atof() is simpler.

But I agree with you about the precision problems with floatin point --
this is why I didn't use it in my version.

On 9/12/2012 2:59 PM, Barbara Morris wrote:

Don't use atof; it returns a float result which might lose some
accuracy, especially if you forget to use EVAL(H).

Use %DECH instead; it returns a decimal result with no loss of

accuracy.

result = %DECH(p : 63: 31);

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