A better than BigDecimal type for prices in Java?

Question

I need a financial type which will always keep numbers in X...X.YY format, even 20 digits, so I will get rid of rounding, formatting and other headache. Is there one?

Added: In other words I am looking for something like:

Financial f=1000.24;

f.setCurrency(USD);

System.out.print(f.toString()); -> $1'000.24

Answer 1

You can always keep financial data in longs, expressed in pennies. But, as you say, there are various headaches involved in doing that, and the max value is, I'm thinking, 19 digits. So BigDecimal would seem to be the way to go.

(Back when BitInteger/BigDecimal were being thought of I pushed for a packed decimal format that would have been lighter weight, but I couldn't get any support for it.)