thanks Roman for replying

i had the, apparently, wrong idea that it were the big numbers giving problems when using floating point arithmetic.

now, after reading up about the 'perils of floating point' i have to rethink my method of calculation.

rolf

Roman Haefeli wrote:

>>The intricacies of 32bit floating point numbers have been discussed up

>>and down on this list.

>>tldr; many decimal numbers do not have an exact floating point
>>representation. Incrementing with such numbers increases the error on
>>each iteration

>>Suggestion: Count with integer numbers and scale afterwards.

>>Roman