BigDecimal#round always, please

@November 9, 2020 ¤ Journal

TIL that 27 digits of significance are possible in Ruby...why not? Here's something that should just be 0.009:

>> 19120.01.to_d / 2124445
=> 0.9000002353555869886017289e-2

Say you were estimating how many significant digits this way:

>> (19120.01.to_d / 2124445).to_s.split(".")[1].size
=> 27

This digit estimation works great for small, cleaner divisions. But it falls apart, since floating point math never truly escapes us. As usual, #round to the rescue:

>> (19120.01.to_d / 2124445).round(5)
=> 0.9e-2
>> (19120.01.to_d / 2124445).round(5).to_s
=> "0.009"

Just a friendly reminder that you'll probably, always, want to #round your BigDecimal's when dividing. Thank me later.

¤ @qrush