Re: [Cbor] Proposal for Currency and Money Amount

[Josef 'Jeff' Sipek <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 08:04:13 +0000, Richter, Jörg wrote:
> > Should this support non-decimal currency amounts?
> > As far as I can tell, the only currently in use non-decimal currency is
> > the Mauritania's ouguiya (ISO 4217: MRU & 929) which uses 1 ouguiya = 5 khoums
> > ...
> > (I suppose the simplest solution to allowing non-decimal currencies would be
> > to make the array 2 or more elements.  The currency code tells the consumer
> > how to render the encoded values.)
> 
> I would be very surprised if software would store values of this
> currency not with fractions 0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 or 0.8.
> 
> Many calculations with amounts also use more decimal places than
> the currency defines.  So there is a need to store a fraction of the smallest unit.
> One daily live example would be petrol prices in Germany that have 3 decimal 
> places instead of the 2 that the Euro defines.  
> Some applications even require non-decimal fractions like 1/3.
> 
> This is of course representable with just one number.

Yeah, that's fair.  The pre-decimal "GBP" which, according to wikipedia, was
'divided into 20 shillings and each shilling into 12 pence, making 240 pence
to the pound' would be much harder to wedge into a "one number format".

Given the use of ISO 4217, I'm happy with the proposal as is (for whatever
it's worth) without having explicit support for historical currencies.

Jeff.

-- 
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
		- Albert Einstein