[GNC] Price showing formula in security register

[john]

> On Sep 21, 2021, at 11:47 AM, Don <don_lists at db-reid.com> wrote:
> 
> (I am using ver 4.6 flatpak)
> 
> In the securities register for one of my mutual fund accounts I
> double-clicked on the "Price" column expecting it to resize that column
> to fit the prices shown.  Instead it changed the contents of the price
> entries to show a formula
> 
>       10 + 170200/704349
> 
> I want to change it back but cannot find a way to do that.
> 
> Oddly, if I select one of the price fields that one changes to show the
> decimal price to 9 decimal places but when I leave that field it goes back
> to showing the formula.

That's not a formula, it is the exact representation of the price, a value that cannot be expressed as a decimal without rounding. You can force decimal display of prices with the checkbox at the top of the page on Preferences>Numbers, Date, Time. The number of decimal places is hard-coded to 2 more than the currency's smallest currency unit (or the smaller of the two in the case of an exchange rate between two currencies). That's 2 in most currencies.

Note that while that price was probably created from a split and is the exact ratio of the amount and value of the split, changing it won't affect the price of the split itself: The pricedb is used for reporting, not for balancing.  Note as well that if you enter a price to nine decimals by hand it will either display as a fraction or rounded to the number of decimals according to the smallest-currency-unit =2 rule. Internally it's always the exact fraction.

Regards,
John Ralls