topic Never use the float data type in Data Engineering

Never use the float data type

lizou — Mon, 30 May 2022 23:11:53 GMT

select float('92233464567.33') returns

92,233,466,000

I am expected result will be around 92,233,464,567.xx

therefore, float data type should be avoided.

Use double or decimal works as expected.

But I see float data type is widely used assuming most numeric values are < 1 billion.

Re: Never use the float data type

Prabakar — Tue, 31 May 2022 13:31:06 GMT

Float is Approximate-number data type, which means that not all values in the data type range can be represented exactly.

Decimal/Numeric is Fixed-Precision data type, which means that all the values in the data type range can be represented exactly with precision and scale.

So its always better you use Decimal instead of float.