RE: [PHP-WIN] Rounding

At 05:49 PM 4/9/02 +0200, Svensson, B.A.T. (HKG) wrote:

The number '2' I now have, was it - to be extreme - it '1,1' (a sealing function) or was it '2,9' (a floor function) before? You can never really tell...

If it was by the rule we've settled on below, then if you have 2, then the number you previously had was >=1.5 and < 2.5. :)

Which integer is "nearest" for 1,5? 1 or 2? To round a decimal number is not as straight forward as it might appear in the first case.

1.5 is the only special case.

In the bitter end this choice is up to the API writers own whim, but in most case I guess (s)he ignore this case, and I would guess that most rounding function then perform a floor function in the case of ==5 (????).

As far as I know, .5 always gets rounded up, not down. In school we were taught, "Four to the floor, Five to the sky". :)

Because of this I believe it a bit ambiguous to say "normal" since it hardly can't exist a "normal" way to perform a rounding. Or??

I guess. The dictionary defines normal, though, as "Conforming with, adhering to, or constituting a norm, standard, pattern, level, or type; typical". So if there is a standard, typical, etc. way that rounding is done, then you can certainly make a case that there is a normal kind of rounding. In ALL of my experiences, rounding has been defined as going to the nearest integer, and rounding UP on .5. And, like I said, all programming languages I have encountered perform a standard rounding the same way. That's why we as societies settle on norms -- so we can communicate without having to resort to academic analyses of every term we use. :) There's no need to feel the need to one-up everything I say. :)

Secondly, because of this "phenomena" some programmers might frequently find them self having to answers question from customer like: "Why does we miss $xxxx in this last summary report?".

Hehe.. brings to mind the movie "Office Space". -Mike