ArithmeticException thrown during BigDecimal.divide

Question

I thought java.math.BigDecimal is supposed to be The Answer™ to the need of performing infinite precision arithmetic with decimal numbers.

Consider the followi

Answer 1

Is there a need for

a=1/3;
b=a*3;

resulting in

b==1;

in financial systems? I guess not. In financial systems it is defined, which roundmode and scale has to be used, when doing calculations. In some situations, the roundmode and scale is defined in the law. All components can rely on such a defined behaviour. Returning b==1 would be a failure, because it would not fulfill the specified behaviour. This is very important when calculating prices etc.

It is like the IEEE 754 specifications for representing floats in binary digits. A component must not optimize a "better" representation without loss of information, because this will break the contract.