How to save a bigDecimal data to file in Java

Question

I would like to know how to save a bigDecimal data to a file.

After searching the stack overflow, I noticed that if you are dealing with financial calculations, you need to use BigDecimal and not double. To follow up on that, say for example, a Tip Calculator, Is it recommended to use double or BigDecimal?

If we use BigDecimal, how would save the data to a file.

I want to write the BigDecimal data to a file using FileUtils library.

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

You have 2 choices: Serialize the object and save it that way (Use ObjectOutputStream), or you could convert it to a String (this is what I'd do) and save the serialized string. BigDecimal has a string constructor, so it is easy to go back and forth (BigDecimal/String). ObjectOutputStream seems to be incompatible with FileUtils without a serious workaround, so you might want to do the string conversion method