The infamous Gorda gas station on CA 1

[Max Rockatansky]

Known to me from the Mud Creek Slide in Big Sur back in 2017 but a lot more infamous lately because of gas prices.  Someone actually bothered to explain why prices are super high on CA 1 in Gorda:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gas-tops-9-highway-1-193505692.html

[pderocco]

Known to me from the Mud Creek Slide in Big Sur back in 2017 but a lot more infamous lately because of gas prices.  Someone actually bothered to explain why prices are super high on CA 1 in Gorda:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gas-tops-9-highway-1-193505692.html

I recall back in about 1979, when gas first reached a stunning $1 a gallon, all the stations had to set their pumps to half the price, and people paid twice the registered amount. How could they do that today, when payment is almost always electronic? If they can't increase the posted price past $9.99⁹, they'll have to write special firmware that, say, adds $10 a gallon to every price, and upgrade every pump. It's going to be a lot harder to deal with than it was back in the day of cash or carbon paper credit card imprints.

[hotdogPi]

There's probably a setting on the pumps that allows switching to per liter.

[skluth]

I wouldn't be surprised if upgrade kits and software solutions are being designed as we debate this

[Mapmikey]

 There were some gas stations in South Carolina when I was growing up and when gas got to a dollar where they displayed the price for a half gallon.

This solution is still available should gas reach $10 a gallon.

[vdeane]

This isn't a unique issue for the current era.  Back in the 70s fuel crisis, gas stations weren't set up to display the sky high (for the time) prices that resulted, so they switched to pricing by liters instead of gallons.  Pricing gas by liters being associated with that time is actually one of the reasons why the US never went metric.

[Techknow]

It just so happens I decided to do a day road trip today through Big Sur (will post about it later!) and I just had to see the gas prices at Gorda. Here it is, as of July 1, 2022:





(The second photo shows one the gas station itself which doesn't have a big sign for the gas prices apparently.

Regular: $9.299/gal
Plus: $9.699/gal
Premium: $9.999/gal

Absolutely insane eh? I filled my gas tank on Rio Road at Carmel for "only" $6.59/gal

[Takumi]

Known to me from the Mud Creek Slide in Big Sur back in 2017 but a lot more infamous lately because of gas prices.  Someone actually bothered to explain why prices are super high on CA 1 in Gorda:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gas-tops-9-highway-1-193505692.html

I recall back in about 1979, when gas first reached a stunning $1 a gallon, all the stations had to set their pumps to half the price, and people paid twice the registered amount. How could they do that today, when payment is almost always electronic? If they can't increase the posted price past $9.99⁹, they'll have to write special firmware that, say, adds $10 a gallon to every price, and upgrade every pump. It's going to be a lot harder to deal with than it was back in the day of cash or carbon paper credit card imprints.

I recently saw a story about a gas station in Washington that was near a race track, and it had to update its system because the price of 100 octane race fuel had gone over $10 a gallon. The solution was they got rid of the extra 9 at the end and were able to move the decimal place one to the right. Still shows four digits on the display.

[Scott5114]

Known to me from the Mud Creek Slide in Big Sur back in 2017 but a lot more infamous lately because of gas prices.  Someone actually bothered to explain why prices are super high on CA 1 in Gorda:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gas-tops-9-highway-1-193505692.html

I recall back in about 1979, when gas first reached a stunning $1 a gallon, all the stations had to set their pumps to half the price, and people paid twice the registered amount. How could they do that today, when payment is almost always electronic? If they can't increase the posted price past $9.99⁹, they'll have to write special firmware that, say, adds $10 a gallon to every price, and upgrade every pump. It's going to be a lot harder to deal with than it was back in the day of cash or carbon paper credit card imprints.

Taking a few liberties here and assuming that the pumps are programmed in C++, they use a typical modern processor, and prices are stored in a typical 4-byte float value, gas prices would have to reach $340,282,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.000 per gallon to cause an overflow error. If they want to save a little bit of memory and store it as tenths of a cent in a standard one-byte int, they can accommodate prices as high as $32.76⁷.

Of course, they might have to install new displays to correctly show such a value.

[pderocco]

There's probably a setting on the pumps that allows switching to per liter.

What's a liter?

[Rothman]

There's probably a setting on the pumps that allows switching to per liter.

What's a liter?

A litreocola!

[Max Rockatansky]

There's probably a setting on the pumps that allows switching to per liter.

What's a liter?

A litreocola!

The better question is what is $9.29 a gallon convert to in liters per Peso?

[kkt]

Known to me from the Mud Creek Slide in Big Sur back in 2017 but a lot more infamous lately because of gas prices.  Someone actually bothered to explain why prices are super high on CA 1 in Gorda:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gas-tops-9-highway-1-193505692.html

I recall back in about 1979, when gas first reached a stunning $1 a gallon, all the stations had to set their pumps to half the price, and people paid twice the registered amount. How could they do that today, when payment is almost always electronic? If they can't increase the posted price past $9.99⁹, they'll have to write special firmware that, say, adds $10 a gallon to every price, and upgrade every pump. It's going to be a lot harder to deal with than it was back in the day of cash or carbon paper credit card imprints.

Taking a few liberties here and assuming that the pumps are programmed in C++, they use a typical modern processor, and prices are stored in a typical 4-byte float value, gas prices would have to reach $340,282,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.000 per gallon to cause an overflow error. If they want to save a little bit of memory and store it as tenths of a cent in a standard one-byte int, they can accommodate prices as high as $32.76⁷.

Of course, they might have to install new displays to correctly show such a value.

Any programmer who'd use a floating point number to hold a price is professional incompetent, and should lose their license to program if there were licenses to program.  It's not just the storage space, it's the precision down to a fraction of a cent when multiplied or divided.

[Scott5114]

Known to me from the Mud Creek Slide in Big Sur back in 2017 but a lot more infamous lately because of gas prices.  Someone actually bothered to explain why prices are super high on CA 1 in Gorda:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gas-tops-9-highway-1-193505692.html

I recall back in about 1979, when gas first reached a stunning $1 a gallon, all the stations had to set their pumps to half the price, and people paid twice the registered amount. How could they do that today, when payment is almost always electronic? If they can't increase the posted price past $9.99⁹, they'll have to write special firmware that, say, adds $10 a gallon to every price, and upgrade every pump. It's going to be a lot harder to deal with than it was back in the day of cash or carbon paper credit card imprints.

Taking a few liberties here and assuming that the pumps are programmed in C++, they use a typical modern processor, and prices are stored in a typical 4-byte float value, gas prices would have to reach $340,282,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.000 per gallon to cause an overflow error. If they want to save a little bit of memory and store it as tenths of a cent in a standard one-byte int, they can accommodate prices as high as $32.76⁷.

Of course, they might have to install new displays to correctly show such a value.

Any programmer who'd use a floating point number to hold a price is professional incompetent, and should lose their license to program if there were licenses to program.  It's not just the storage space, it's the precision down to a fraction of a cent when multiplied or divided.

How would you do it, then? Use an int holding tenths of a cent and just wedge a decimal point in it at display time? (This is why I hate C/C++–choosing correct datatypes is nowhere near obvious because of things that are never explained in the book. I wouldn't even be surprised if someone told me "every time you store a multiple of five in a double it causes a transformer to explode in Helsinki".)

Technically there are licenses if you use MSVCC, but GCC doesn't require one, so...

[kkt]

Known to me from the Mud Creek Slide in Big Sur back in 2017 but a lot more infamous lately because of gas prices.  Someone actually bothered to explain why prices are super high on CA 1 in Gorda:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gas-tops-9-highway-1-193505692.html

I recall back in about 1979, when gas first reached a stunning $1 a gallon, all the stations had to set their pumps to half the price, and people paid twice the registered amount. How could they do that today, when payment is almost always electronic? If they can't increase the posted price past $9.99⁹, they'll have to write special firmware that, say, adds $10 a gallon to every price, and upgrade every pump. It's going to be a lot harder to deal with than it was back in the day of cash or carbon paper credit card imprints.

Taking a few liberties here and assuming that the pumps are programmed in C++, they use a typical modern processor, and prices are stored in a typical 4-byte float value, gas prices would have to reach $340,282,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.000 per gallon to cause an overflow error. If they want to save a little bit of memory and store it as tenths of a cent in a standard one-byte int, they can accommodate prices as high as $32.76⁷.

Of course, they might have to install new displays to correctly show such a value.

Any programmer who'd use a floating point number to hold a price is professional incompetent, and should lose their license to program if there were licenses to program.  It's not just the storage space, it's the precision down to a fraction of a cent when multiplied or divided.

How would you do it, then? Use an int holding tenths of a cent and just wedge a decimal point in it at display time? (This is why I hate C/C++–choosing correct datatypes is nowhere near obvious because of things that are never explained in the book. I wouldn't even be surprised if someone told me "every time you store a multiple of five in a double it causes a transformer to explode in Helsinki".)

Technically there are licenses if you use MSVCC, but GCC doesn't require one, so...

Yes, exactly.  Well probably 1/100ths of a cent for protection during rounding. 

I thought Samuel Harbison and Guy Steele's A C Reference Manual was a lot more helpful than K&R on a lot of issues, although I don't think it'll help you choose a data type for money.

C was designed to write the Unix kernel, and it's still really good for when you need to get close to the bits... unfortunately shoehorning it into C++ wasn't a very good fit and IMHO it would have been wiser for high level programming to start with a different language, not quite so close to the bits, to allow clearer expression and greater portability.  We're not always writing device drivers...

[bwana39]

Someone who sold racing fuel and AV gas has already encountered this. The easier way is to drop the 9/10 cent from the end and you could make it with the same 5 digits. As a whole, the problem is with the displays not with the software's ability to calculate it. As far as that goes, just a permanent 1 affixed before the display would suffice.

Both of these would require reprogramming the display output. Affixing a permanent 1 would make reducing it to below $10 troublesome, but.....

[hotdogPi]

Someone who sold racing fuel and AV gas has already encountered this. The easier way is to drop the 9/10 cent from the end and you could make it with the same 5 digits. As a whole, the problem is with the displays not with the software's ability to calculate it. As far as that goes, just a permanent 1 affixed before the display would suffice.

Both of these would require reprogramming the display output. Affixing a permanent 1 would make reducing it to below $10 troublesome, but.....

I remember a gas station that had a spray-painted 4 as the first digit, I believe in 2008. The spray-painted 4 was still there after it closed. Their digit panels said "2." and "3.", with the decimal place as part of the panel intended for the dollars digit. They must not have had any that said "4."

2009 GSV shows it here. Look at the blue panel in the back.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.7415192,-71.1683284,3a,55.3y,248.62h,79.52t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s3ap21VJHvT6g5U8VfDMjlQ!2e0!5s20090501T000000!7i3328!8i1664