Skip Headers
Oracle® Database SQL Reference
10g Release 2 (10.2)

Part Number B14200-02
Go to Documentation Home
Home
Go to Book List
Book List
Go to Table of Contents
Contents
Go to Index
Index
Go to Master Index
Master Index
Go to Feedback page
Feedback

Go to previous page
Previous
Go to next page
Next
View PDF

TO_BINARY_DOUBLE

Syntax

Description of to_binary_double.gif follows
Description of the illustration to_binary_double.gif

Purpose

TO_BINARY_DOUBLE returns a double-precision floating-point number.

You cannot use a floating-point number format element (F, f, D, or d) in a character string expr.

Conversions from character strings or NUMBER to BINARY_DOUBLE can be inexact, because the NUMBER and character types use decimal precision to represent the numeric value, and BINARY_DOUBLE uses binary precision.

Conversions from BINARY_FLOAT to BINARY_DOUBLE are exact.

Examples

The examples that follow are based on a table with three columns, each with a different numeric datatype:

CREATE TABLE float_point_demo
  (dec_num NUMBER(10,2), bin_double BINARY_DOUBLE, bin_float BINARY_FLOAT);

INSERT INTO float_point_demo
  VALUES (1234.56,1234.56,1234.56);

SELECT * FROM float_point_demo;

   DEC_NUM BIN_DOUBLE  BIN_FLOAT
---------- ---------- ----------
   1234.56 1.235E+003 1.235E+003

The following example converts a value of datatype NUMBER to a value of datatype BINARY_DOUBLE:

SELECT dec_num, TO_BINARY_DOUBLE(dec_num)
  FROM float_point_demo;

   DEC_NUM TO_BINARY_DOUBLE(DEC_NUM)
---------- -------------------------
   1234.56                1.235E+003

The following example compares extracted dump information from the dec_num and bin_double columns:

SELECT DUMP(dec_num) "Decimal",
   DUMP(bin_double) "Double"
   FROM float_point_demo;

Decimal                     Double
--------------------------- ---------------------------------------------
Typ=2 Len=4: 194,13,35,57   Typ=101 Len=8: 192,147,74,61,112,163,215,10