Decimal and, only the best mathematicians were able to multiply or divide large numbers. These difficulties were completely solved with the introduction of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system for representing integers. This system has been extended to represent some non-integer numbers, called "decimal fractions" or "decimal numbers" for forming the "decimal numeral system". For writing numbers, the decimal system uses ten decimal digits, a decimal mark, and, for negative numbers, a minus sign "−". The decimal digits are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; the decimal separator is the dot "" in many countries (including English speaking ones),
Decimal data type Decimal data type Fractional numbers are supported on most programming languages as floating-point numbers or fixed-point numbers. However, such representations typically restrict the denominator to a power of two. Most decimal fractions (or most fractions in general) cannot be represented exactly as a fraction with a denominator that is a power of two. For example, the simple decimal fraction 0.3 (3/10) might be represented as 5404319552844595/18014398509481984 (0.299999999999999988897769...). This inexactness causes many problems that are familiar to experienced programmers. For example, the expression codice_1 might counterintuitively evaluate to false in some systems, due to the inexactness of the representation of decimals.