Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!pan!jw
From: jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Informix 4gl - no integer arithmetic???
Message-ID: <466@pan.UUCP>
Date: 4 Sep 88 10:47:48 GMT
Reply-To: jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson)
Organization: Adasoft AG, Solothurn, Switzerland
Lines: 32


I have just discovered, the hard way, that in Informix 4gl the following
statement, which contains only integer values, yields a most surprising
result:

main
  define
    i integer
  let i = 630 / 100 * 60
  display i
end main

Running this program produces a result of 378!!!

The 4gl manual states that all arithmetic is done in type 'decimal', which
might explain what is going on here, but then it goes on to explain that
for integer values, the specific type used is 'decimal(10,0)', which would
imply that the integer nature of the operations should be preserved.  It
obviously is not.  The only solution I have been able to find is to use
an intermediate variable whenever integer division is performed:

main
  define
    i, botch integer
  let botch = 630 / 100
  let i = botch * 60
  display i
end main

Has anyone found a better work-around?

jw