Is there a BigFloat class in C#?
Perhaps you're looking for BigRational? Microsoft released it under their BCL project on CodePlex. Not actually sure how or if it will fit your needs.
It keeps it as a rational number. You can get the a string with the decimal value either by casting or some multiplication.
var r = new BigRational(5000, 3768);
Console.WriteLine((decimal)r);
Console.WriteLine((double)r);
Or with a simple(ish) extension method like this:
public static class BigRationalExtensions
{
public static string ToDecimalString(this BigRational r, int precision)
{
var fraction = r.GetFractionPart();
// Case where the rational number is a whole number
if(fraction.Numerator == 0 && fraction.Denominator == 1)
{
return r.GetWholePart() + ".0";
}
var adjustedNumerator = (fraction.Numerator
* BigInteger.Pow(10, precision));
var decimalPlaces = adjustedNumerator / fraction.Denominator;
// Case where precision wasn't large enough.
if(decimalPlaces == 0)
{
return "0.0";
}
// Give it the capacity for around what we should need for
// the whole part and total precision
// (this is kinda sloppy, but does the trick)
var sb = new StringBuilder(precision + r.ToString().Length);
bool noMoreTrailingZeros = false;
for (int i = precision; i > 0; i--)
{
if(!noMoreTrailingZeros)
{
if ((decimalPlaces%10) == 0)
{
decimalPlaces = decimalPlaces/10;
continue;
}
noMoreTrailingZeros = true;
}
// Add the right most decimal to the string
sb.Insert(0, decimalPlaces%10);
decimalPlaces = decimalPlaces/10;
}
// Insert the whole part and decimal
sb.Insert(0, ".");
sb.Insert(0, r.GetWholePart());
return sb.ToString();
}
}
If it's out of the precision range of a decimal or double, they will be cast to their respective types with a value of 0.0. Also, casting to decimal, when the result is outside of its range, will cause an OverflowException
to be thrown.
The extension method I wrote (which may not be the best way to calculate a fraction's decimal representation) will accurately convert it to a string, with unlimited precision. However, if the number is smaller than the precision requested, it will return 0.0, just like decimal or double would.