The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:
Page:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/15/datatype-numeric.html Description:
article 8.1.2 states the following:
''We use the following terms below: The precision of a numeric is the total
count of significant digits in the whole number, that is, the number of
digits to both sides of the decimal point. The scale of a numeric is the
count of decimal digits in the fractional part, to the right of the decimal
point. So the number 23.5141 has a precision of 6 and a scale of 4. Integers
can be considered to have a scale of zero.''
however it also states the following towards the end:
'' For example, a column declared as
NUMERIC(3, 5)
will round values to 5 decimal places and can store values between -0.00999
and 0.00999, inclusive.''
Now from whatever i could decipher the syntax of the numeric data type is
NUMERIC(precision,scale) and if we write NUMERIC (3,5) it would mean that we
are trying to store a number which has 3 digits in total and 5 of them are
to the right of the decimal point, which doesn't make sense !
besides i tried running this in postgresql and the result was as follows:
practice=# create table t1(height numeric(3,5));
ERROR: NUMERIC scale 5 must be between 0 and precision 3
LINE 1: create table t1(height numeric(3,5));
Please look into the matter and kindly revert back to me whatever you find
out about this so that i can correct myself incase i misunderstood what the
document says...