What is the string representation for the float?

The Erlang people hold on to the point where the "123456" is for integer 123456 only, not for 123456.0 float! I was using nice and small pgsql PostgreSQL driver for Erlang and everything worked cool before I had troubles to fetch float datatype values which are rounded to integer.

As it happens, the list_to_float("123") will produce an error:

     21> erlang:list_to_float("123").
     ** exception error: bad argument
        in function  list_to_float/1
            called as list_to_float("123")
     22> erlang:list_to_float("123.0").
     123.0

That feature was explicitly confirmed by Erlang team, so we have to supply the missing ".0" ourselves. I had to patch the pgsql_util:decode_col locally to make it work:

decode_col(#desc{format=text, type=Float}, Value)
 when Float =:= float4; Float =:= float8 ->
    ListValue = binary_to_list(Value),
    IsFloat   = string:str(ListValue,"."),
    if
       IsFloat > 0 -> FValue = Value;
       true        -> FValue = Value ++ ".0"
    end,
    list_to_float(FValue);