Re: Extract some numeric fields from a string

[Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I suspect the reason Dennis was using atof() is because it'll read the 
number up til it finds a non-numeric character, and return the numeric 
portion.

By contrast, %DEC will simply back an exception, and return nothing when 
it encounters non-numeric data.  So you have to add code to find the 
non-numeric data, and strip out only the part you want.  In that way, 
atof() is simpler.

But I agree with you about the precision problems with floatin point -- 
this is why I didn't use it in my version.

On 9/12/2012 2:59 PM, Barbara Morris wrote:
> Don't use atof; it returns a float result which might lose some
> accuracy, especially if you forget to use EVAL(H).
>
> Use %DECH instead; it returns a decimal result with no loss of accuracy.
>
>          result = %DECH(p : 63: 31);