Hi Everyone, To bring closure to this thread, my whole problem was caused by not knowing about the extra_float_digits setting. We have a script that uses COPY to transfer a subset of rows from a very large production table to a test table. The script was not setting extra_float_digits so the values did not match even though they appeared to match when running queries in psql. Definitely another gotcha for floating point values and it might be a good idea to mention this setting on the "Numeric Types" page of the docs. Thanks to all who chimed in to help! Tom On Feb 28, 2013, at 7:05 PM, James Cloos <cloos@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>>>>> "TD" == Tom Duffey <tduffey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > TD> Riddle me this. I have a database column of type "real" that gets > TD> mapped to a Java field of type double via JDBC. ... > > TD> - Selecting values from both test and production DBs using psql > TD> shows "10.3885" as the value > > TD> - The Java app on production shows "10.3884573" while the test app > TD> shows "10.3885" > > I suspect the issue is that psql(1) and whatever java method you use to > convert the floats to text choose different rounding. > > By default, it seems that psql(1) uses something like printf("%.4f",...) > whereas your java app calls a routing which works more like "%.7f". > > (The wire format for floats is the same as they are stored, not a text > representation thereof.) > > -JimC > -- > James Cloos <cloos@xxxxxxxxxxx> OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6 -- Tom Duffey tduffey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 414-751-0600 x102 -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general