beancount throws exceptions for amounts over 1 billion

[Justus Pendleton]

The Fix for bug #584 -- https://github.com/beancount/beancount/commit/4c1e87bb5a6883f8217a495de5d0ddae109aa289 -- introduced the code:

# Allow precision for numbers as large as 1 billion in addition to

# the required number of fractional digits.

#

# TODO(blais): Review this to assess performance impact, and whether

# we could fold this outside a calling loop.

ctx.prec = num_fractional_digits + 9

The result is that any amount over 1 billion (e.g. in a bean-query) results in an exception:

decimal.InvalidOperation: [<class 'decimal.InvalidOperation'>]

For my personal usage I can just increase the 9 to a 12 or whatever I need but I wanted to ask if there's a better approach so I can try to submit an actual patch?

Cheers,

Justus

[Martin Blais]

That's when you know you've made it! Congratulations Justus, you may be the first billionaire on this list.

I wish for a reproduction of the original bug, I don't recall what caused the issue.

Even my comments read cryptic to me now.

I'd be tempted to remove this, but a more conservative approach would be to bump it.

I did a quick check on print, I don't see any impact.

Here you go for now: https://github.com/beancount/beancount/commit/c9132bba2c7a79d181eb523aef024d1cd3547cf5

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[Eric Altendorf]

I remember when this happened, was so great

https://medium.com/@CWE_CAPEC/buffett-overflow-integer-overflow-in-berkshire-hathaway-stock-407cf26fedc2

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[Justus Pendleton]

On Monday, December 22, 2025 at 4:19:45 AM UTC+10:30 bl...@furius.ca wrote:

That's when you know you've made it! Congratulations Justus, you may be the first billionaire on this list.

Alas, 1 billion VND is only about $38,000 USD. The joys of years of extremely high inflation on a currency. Most property near a major city is easy worth a billion these days. And a good salary for a senior developer can approach 100 million.