php long numbers
I got a mail from long time Oracle guy Joel Garry regarding the twitter widget in the right hand column.
On orawin.info, you have a twitter feed, where each entry has a date/time link on it. But those links look like http://twitter.com/nlitchfield/statuses/8.0773403426E+16 which look to me like something is translating a big number to scientific notation…?
Well Joel was right. Something was translating a large number to scientific notation. That something turns out to be php itself. Twitter status updates are (apparently) a simple ever increasing integer. There are now a lot of twitter status updates. As this page shows recent versions of php will automatically display that in scientific notation unless explicitly told otherwise. Now I personally think that this is an odd thing for php to choose to do, but us database folks surely recognize the folly of the plugin programmers relying on default formats. Anyway my version of the plugin is now fixed – based on this forum post - and thanks to Joel for the heads up. Anyone reading this who programs in php against databases that might return large numbers might wish to reveiw their web pages for appropriate results.
And happy 00th birthday to IBM!
joel garry
17 Jun 11 at 3:31 pm