Exact decimal datatype for C++?

Question

PHP has a decimal type, which doesn't have the "inaccuracy" of floats and doubles, so that 2.5 + 2.5 = 5 and not 4.999999999978325 or something like that.

So I wonder if there is such a data type implementation for C or C++?

Answer 1

The Boost.Multiprecision library has a decimal based floating point template class called cpp_dec_float, for which you can specify any precision you want.

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
#include <boost/multiprecision/cpp_dec_float.hpp>

int main()
{
    namespace mp = boost::multiprecision;
    // here I'm using a predefined type that stores 100 digits,
    // but you can create custom types very easily with any level
    // of precision you want.
    typedef mp::cpp_dec_float_100 decimal;

    decimal tiny("0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001");
    decimal huge("100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000");
    decimal a = tiny;         

    while (a != huge)
    {
        std::cout.precision(100);
        std::cout << std::fixed << a << '\n';
        a *= 10;
    }    
}

Answer 2

Yes:

There are arbitrary precision libraries for C++.
A good example is The GNU Multiple Precision arithmetic library.