C#: Storing percentages, 50 or 0.50?

Question

When holding percentage values in variables is there a preference between holding them as whole numbers vs fractions. That is should the variable hold numbers between 0 and 100 or between 0.00 and 1.00? In either case, the variable holding the values is of decimal type.

The database I'm interacting with happens to store them as whole numbers 0 to 100.

Note: I'm using the word "whole number" to denote values in the range 0 to 100 though those values may contain fractional components (e.g., 25.75). I don't know how else to describe the difference between the two ranges of percentage values

Answer 1

I would be inclined to store them as 0 to 1, then there is no conversion required when using the number in a calculation.

Using a number between 0 and 100 is more of a display / readability way of looking at the number. When you are displaying the percentage you can use String.Format("{0:P},percentage) which will expect the number to be between 0 and 1 but will display as 0 to 100.