The DECIMALOVERFLOW option controls the result of arithmetic operations that produce out-of-range numbers. Decimal numbers are stored as a mantissa and an exponent. Decimal overflow occurs when the result of a calculation is very large and can no longer be represented by the exponent portion of the decimal representation.
Allows overflow. A calculation that generates overflow executes without error, and the results of the calculation are NA.
(Default) Disallows overflow. A calculation involving overflow stops executing, and an error message is produced.
Example 5-19 The Effect of DECIMALOVERFLOW
This example shows the effect of changing the value of the DECIMALOVERFLOW option.
When you execute a SHOW statement such as the following without changing DECIMALOVERFLOW from its default value of NO, an error occurs.
SHOW 1000000.0 ** 133
When you change DECIMALOVERFLOW to YES, the same statement executes without an error and produces NA as the result of the operation. The statements
DECIMALOVERFLOW = YES SHOW 1000000.0 ** 133
produce the following result.
NA