Overview
Overview
If you ever tried to build any application which deals in monetary computations, you might have written a responsible class dealing with such hefty operations using BigDecimal.
Float/Double Arithmetic
If you try to develop the your monetary computation class using float or double arithmetic yo would encounter unexpected results which would make you believe that the operations are broken.
public final class FloatingPointProblem {
public static void main(final String[] args) {
System.out.println(0.51 - .4);
}
}If you execute the aforementioned snippet, it will get the an absurd result - 0.10999999999999999
Basically in Java, we can not represent the actual base 10 numbers and that’s why such problems occur.
Old School Solution
To overcome such challenges, the BigDecimal class has been introduced which proved its convenience over the floating point arithmetic.
What’s the problem?
The problem lies in writing too much boiler-plate code which makes it hard to manage.
JSR 354
This is a Java Specification Request to add new features relating to Monetary computations. It facilitates developer to write manageable codes.
Reading Material
I have found an extensive guide written by the one of the developers of Java Money. It covers all the nitty gritty details of Java Money API.