BigDecimal in JavaScript

This article will discuss the uses of BigDecimal in JavaScript.

Use of BigDecimal in JavaScript

Before you work on how BigDecimal works in JavaScript, you must know about BigDecimal. A BigDecimal consists of an unscaled arbitrary precision integer value with a 32-bit integer scale.

If the scale is zero or positive, it is the number of digits to the right of the decimal point. If the integer is negative, the unscaled value is multiplied by ten to the power of the scale’s negation.

BigDecimal determines equality and hash codes using the decimal representation of binary floating-point integers. This produces different results than conversion between Long and Double numbers, which uses the precise form.

Note that you must install the npm package of BigDecimal before running the code.

Save the below code as a js extension file.

let bDecimal = require('bigdecimal');

let num = new bDecimal.BigInteger('123456abcdefghijklmn7890', 25);
console.log('num is ' + num);

let newD = new bDecimal.BigDecimal(num);
let k = new bDecimal.BigDecimal('4567890.12345612345678901234567890123');
console.log('newD * k = ' + newD.multiply(k));

let two = new bDecimal.BigDecimal('2');
console.log('Average = ' + newD.add(k).divide(two));

You can see different method like as multiply(), add(), divide(). The add() method add one BigDecimal object value to other where newD is a BigDecimal object, newD is added to k.

Whereas the multiply() method multiplies one BigDecimal object value to another, the divide() method divides the one BigDecimal value by another.

When converting a Double or Float to a BigDecimal, caution must be given since the binary fraction representation of the Double and Float does not simply transfer to a decimal representation.

Output:

BigDecimal is ideal for financial data arithmetic or anything that exceeds the JavaScript Integer (IEEE-754 float) type. Decimal was not included in the new ECMAScript standards.