Canonical Representation for decimal

I would like to get clarification on whether the canonical representation for
the decimal dataype (http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-xmlschema-2-20001024/#decimal)
allows the single zero to the left of the decimal place in decimal numbers such
as 0.12345 or is the zero regarded as a 'leading zero' and therefore prohibited.

I would assume that the same convention will hold for the mantissa part of a
float value since the mantissa representation follows the lexical rules for
decimal.  Currently the canonical definition for float is a little cryptic on
the matter.  It states 'The exponent must be indicated by "E" and number
representations must be normalized such that for non-zero numbers there is a
single non-zero digit to the left of the decimal point.'

We use a subset of the Schema built-in datatypes in FpML and are currently
deciding whether we should additionally constrain our lexical representations to
follow the Schema canonical representations.

Thanks

Guy Gurden
J.P. Morgan (FpML.org)



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Received on Wednesday, 29 November 2000 12:16:26 UTC