2.51 becomes 3 (this is the 'nearest' rule, which always comes first)
2.49 becomes 2 (again, 'nearest')

However, what happens if you have 2.50 ? Which way do you round it... 'tis no nearer to 2 than to 3. The IEEE standard says if there is a tie, round to the even number.

2.50 becomes 2
3.50 becomes 4

You have to pick up or down... this method is consistent and thus tends to make your errors (statistically) smaller.

Actually, this isn't quite the whole story. Most everyone follows the IEEE convention of "round towards nearest or even."

I'm aware of that - but it wasn't applicable in this case. Btw, (s)printf doesn't seem to get it right:

printf "%.15f", 0.5;  # prints 0.500000000000000
printf "%.0f",  0.5;  # prints 1 and should print 0
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and 0.5 can be represented exactly ...

-- Hofmator

What if you want to chop a number but not round it? printf just *wants* to round, no option to tell it not to :(

I needed something that would chop the extra digits (price calculataions) without rounding.

quick fox was to compare the sprintf result with the original and if it was larger remove 0.01 - yuk!...

I ended up using split and substr... - not pretty either

There must be a better way!