Last Updated: February 25, 2016
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19.54K
· jmarizgit

JavaScript - painless decimal multiplication

JavaScript has a bug when multiplying decimals, try yourself:

0.1 * 0.2
> 0.020000000000000004 // NodeJS 0.8

The way to correct this is to multiply the decimals before multiple their values, try yourself:

( 0.1 * 10 + 0.2 * 10 ) / 10
> 0.3

You can create a function for this:

function multdec ( val1, val2 ) {
    return ( val1 * 10 + val2 * 10 ) / 10;
}

You can extend the Math object:

Math.multdec = function ( val1, val2 ) {
    return ( val1 * 10 + val2 * 10 ) / 10;
}

Now you can call this operation in two ways:

multdec( val1, val2 );  // 0.3
// or
Math.multdec ( val1, val2 );  // 0.3

4 Responses
Add your response

Thanks for sharing!

over 1 year ago ·

The is not really a bug, but a side effect of JavaScript using floating point numbers.

But its still a nice solution to the issue.

more info about floating point numbers here.
http://floating-point-gui.de/formats/fp/

over 1 year ago ·

You're adding decimals together, not multiplying them.

For multiplication the code would need to change to:

return ( (val1 * 10) * (val2 * 10) ) / 100;

over 1 year ago ·

@mystaticself

return ( (12.12 * 10) * (100 * 10) ) / 100;
will give '1211.999999999998'

Where as
return (12.12*100)

will give '1212'

over 1 year ago ·