Comments on: SQL SERVER – Get Answer in Float When Dividing of Two Integer

By: avi

avi — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:47:22 +0000

thank you better than msdn

By: Jorgen Harmse

Jorgen Harmse — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:58:41 +0000

Certainly it produces a float, but I don’t think the value is what the original post wanted. The integer divide has to happen first, and the result of that is converted to float. A / (B * 1.0) and A * 1.0 / B b both perform floating point division.

> sqldf(“select 8 / 3 * 1.0″)
8 / 3 * 1.0
1 2

By: Jorgen Harmse

Jorgen Harmse — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:41:30 +0000

Certainly this produces a float, but the value depends on precedence of / & *, which is non-obvious to casual readers. I would specify A / (B * 1.0) or (A / B) * 1.0 or A * 1.0 / B. The first & third do what the original questioner wanted. The second does integer division and turns the answer into a float.

By: Mahesh Chikhale

Mahesh Chikhale — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 11:34:11 +0000

hello sir my table is able to store the float value like 75.5 but if i am going to store like 125.00,50.00 etc it will store 125 , 50 not giving me decimal places
what is the solution if i want to store the values with 00 in decimal places?

By: Jesse Anderson

Jesse Anderson — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:40:45 +0000

Thanks for the post Dave et al. I must say, after beginning my professional career as a developer, your blog has been a top reference of mine (along with MSDN of ciurse) when I need help solving a problem with SQL.

By: madhivanan

madhivanan — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:14:40 +0000

select round(col,2)

By: Nowfal majeed

Nowfal majeed — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:59:15 +0000

Thank You very much for this examples..I have tried i got answer..But one thing if i need 1.20 instead of 1.2089876 what i have to do?

By: Happy Web Designer

Happy Web Designer — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:38:11 +0000

Excellent,

This one had me stumped.

To get a percentage with decimal places

100.0*@numerator/@denominator

where both are INT and extract as float.

Job done.

Thank you.

By: Darren

Darren — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:23:26 +0000

This has caught me many times…
Putting the 1.0 at the beginning of the line makes a difference:

declare @a int,@b int,@c float
set @a=1
set @b=2

select @a/@b – Result 0
select @a/@b*1.0 – Result 0.0
select 1.0*@a/@b – Result 0.500000

By: SQL SERVER - Puzzle - Solution - Computed Columns Datatype Explanation Journey to SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 01:31:40 +0000

[...] SQL SERVER – Get Answer in Float When Dividing of Two Integer SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Solution – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation [...]

By: Marek Śliwiński

Marek Śliwiński — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:39:25 +0000

Thanks guys, you make a nice duet together :)
Very interesting about this precedence.

By: SQL SERVER - Puzzle - Computed Columns Datatype Explanation Journey to SQL Authority with Pinal Dave

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 01:31:10 +0000

[...] 27, 2008 by pinaldave Yesterday I wrote post about SQL SERVER – Get Answer in Float When Dividing of Two Integer. I received excellent comment from SQL Server MVP Jacob Sebastian. Jacob has clearified the concept [...]

By: Jerry Hung

Jerry Hung — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:23:07 +0000

Sometimes I get lazy and just do
field = int column A / int column B * 1.0

Then I *think* I get float back

By: pinaldave

pinaldave — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:14:35 +0000

Thank you Jacob,

I like your additional explanation. I just realize after reading your explanation that I should include your explanation in the post itself so it is visible to everybody right away.

Also this has brought another idea in my mind that when creating calculated field the same scenario happens. E.g. When we create calculated field from additions of INT it will give us final calculated field as INT. If we want that in another datatype we should have either follow your suggestion or CAST them.

Regards,
Pinal

By: Jacob sebastian

Jacob sebastian — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:10:32 +0000

Nice post and something that is very much useful in the day-to-day programming life.

Just wanted to add to what is already explained, that, SQL Server automatically does a cast to the data type having the highest precedence. So the result of INT and INT will be INT, but INT and FLOAT will be FLOAT because FLOAT has a higher precedence. If you want a different data type, you need to do an EXPLICIT cast.

For example:

SELECT 100/3 AS Result
/*
Result
———–
33
*/

SELECT 100/3.0 AS Result
/*
Result
—————————————
33.333333
*/

The precedence of each data type is documented here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190309(SQL.90).aspx