ltrim rtrim Causing Floating Field to Round up??

Question

ltrim rtrim Causing Floating Field to Round up??

david.ostrander

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Points: 1828
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October 22, 2013 at 1:34 pm

#284074

Hello -
I have a Select query that pulls data from a view. In my Select query I have the line
ltrim(rtrim([Revenue])) AS 'Revenue'
I'm finding out that if I remove the ltrim(rtrim the revenue number comes up correct as 10041.25 but with the ltrim(rtrim back in it gets rounded up to 10041.30.
I didn't think this would do this. Is there a way to fix this?
Regards,
David

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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Luis Cazares SSC Guru Points: 183706 More actions · Answer 1

LTRIM and RTRIM won't chage values of a character string. The problem might be an implicit conversion if your Revenue column is not a character type. To avoid this problem, you should do an explicit conversion.

Luis C.
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david.ostrander SSCommitted Points: 1828 More actions · Answer 2

Thank you for the fast response. You stated

To avoid this problem, you should do an explicit conversion.

My column is Revenue (float, null)

How would I do the explicit conversion? On the view or select statment?

Regards,

Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004504 More actions · Answer 3

Why are you trimming a float in the first place?

A float cannot have leading or trailing spaces as it's a numeric data type. Only strings can have leading or trailing spaces.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
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Michael Valentine Jones SSC Guru Points: 64818 More actions · Answer 4

Casting the float to a VARCHAR value is what causes the rounding you are seeing:

select

a.MyFloat,

ToVarchar = convert(varchar(30),a.MyFloat),

ToLtrimRtrim =ltrim(rtrim(a.MyFloat))

from

( Select MyFloat = convert(float,10041.25E00) ) a

Results:

MyFloat ToVarchar ToLtrimRtrim

---------------------- ------------------------------ -----------------------

10041.25 10041.3 10041.3

ParulPrabu SSCrazy Points: 2271 More actions · Answer 5

GilaMonster (10/22/2013)
Why are you trimming a float in the first place?
A float cannot have leading or trailing spaces as it's a numeric data type. Only strings can have leading or trailing spaces.

Hi David,

What are you trying to do with trim function on FLOAT value?