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2011-06-15 10-49-56
AcacioPN
Staff
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Arithmetic Division operator - behavior change
Question
Hello everyone
 
This post is to inform the OutSystems community that the behavior of the arithmetic Division operator (/) has been changed.
 
The change is related to the division of Integer numbers. As it was before, in some cases dividing two integer values would generate an Integer result, and integer division was executed; in other cases, decimal division of the two integer values was executed, and the result was a decimal value.
For example, depending on the exact context, you could have: 
  • 10 / 4 = 2 (and the result would be an Integer expression);
  • 10 / 4 = 2.5 (and the result would be a Decimal expression);
 
To fix this inconsistency, OutSystems has changed the behavior to be the same in all cases: decimal division is executed, and the result is a Decimal expression, in all cases. This change is effective in the following Agile Platform versions:
  • Agile Platform 4.2 - starting with revision 4.2.4.79
  • Agile Platform 5.0 - starting with revision 5.0.2.29
  • Agile Platform 5.1 - starting with revision 5.1.1.18

This change does not affect calculations where dividing values were being explicitly converted to Decimal, or the result explicitly converted to Integer: 
  • IntegerToDecimal(10) / IntegerToDecimal(4) = 2.5 (this did not change);
  • DecimalToInteger(10/4) = 2 (this did not change as well).

If you have any questions regarding this subject, please send an email to OutSystems Product Support (support@outsystems.com).
 
Regards,

Acácio Porta Nova
OutSystems Product Support
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06 May 2011
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2016-04-21 20-09-55
J.
 
MVP
awesome news. was a long time annoyance :D
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09 May 2011
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2015-04-10 17-57-05
Pedro Coelho
 
MVP
This should be marked as a breaking change, since ppl (at least I did) used the division operator having in consideration exactly what was removed (int division if both parameters were ints, decimal division if at least one of them was decimal)

We have to go back to all the projects and go one by one to see which should be kept as integer division (and make the appropriated changes) and the ones who don't need any change, to ensure the expected results are still obtained
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09 May 2011
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2025-07-02 19-21-41
Carla Ribeiro da Fonseca
What Pedro said.

Since the previous behaviour is the expected behaviour in C# , C++, Java and Python (and probably every other strong-typed languages) a bigger warning of this change is probably a good idea.
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09 May 2011
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2012-03-16 12-21-09
João Rosado
Staff
Hi,

Its actually not that big of a change, since most of the results were already decimal results. These changes only made all results coerent.

The only 2 very specific situations where it actually would give integer division was

DecimalToInteger(10) / DecimalToInteger(4)
or
IntegerVariableA / IntegerVariableB



This is what Acacio means by "depending on the exact context".
All others situations always returned decimals. So its very unlikelly that this change will have a big impact on running applications.

For example, this was already a decimal result
IntegerVariableA / (IntegerVariableA * 2) = 0.5

as well as writting directly on an expression
1/2 = 0.5


Regards,
João Rosado
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10 May 2011
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