Saving a UNIX timestamp in MySQL as type DOUBLE?

Question

My function call takes some input, and throws it into a database. Usually, it's integers, but today, I need it to throw in a unix timestamp.

This overflew the FLOAT type, but works with type DOUBLE.

Is there anything I should be worried about by saving that 10-digit integer in type DOUBLE?

I did found a strange error, posted here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9503646/mysql-double-type-comparation-fails — Serbu Florin-Adrian, Feb 29 '12 at 17:18

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 16 '10 at 16:14

2

The total precision of a DOUBLE PRECISION value is approximately 16 decimal digits, so you should not worry, even if you store milliseconds or microseconds.

answered Nov 16 '10 at 16:14

Marco Mariani

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Cheersh! So float, then, would be 8 digits, I assume? – Julian H. Lam Nov 16 '10 at 17:00
for a 32 bit floating point, 24 bits of significand precision, log10(2^24) ≈ 7.225 decimal digits – Marco Mariani Nov 16 '10 at 20:39

Saving a UNIX timestamp in MySQL as type DOUBLE?

1 Answers1