Hi Everyone,
The purpose of this code is to use math to determine how many decimal places are in a floating point number. I have used this algorithm when importing unknown/unpredictable data to help determine what data type and size I would like the field to be. The odd thing is that although the algorithm is mathematically sound, Fox does some creative math when I feed in numbers with a lot of decimal places. Here is the code:

nValue = 234.8234721345
LOCAL decPortion, itterationCtr

itterationCtr = 0
decPortion = nValue - INT(nValue)
DO WHILE INT(decPortion) < decPortion
	decPortion = decPortion * 10
	itterationCtr = itterationCtr + 1
	?decPortion
ENDDO
? itterationCtr

... and the output starts like ...

8.2347213450
82.3472134500
823.4721345000
8234.7213450001
82347.2134500008
823472.1345000083
8234721.4560000830

You can run it & see how it ends from there, but the interesting part begins on the 4th element of output. All I am doing is multiplying the number by 10. Why does 823.4721345000 * 10 get me 8234.7213450001? I'm assuming it has SOMETHING to do w/ mathematical precision, but if I just type in

?823.4721345000 * 10

outside of this looping logic, it returns the CORRECT value w/o that '1' tacked onto the end of it. Does anyone have any thoughts or insights on this?