Rounding in financial applications can have serious implications, and the rounding method used should be specified precisely. In these cases, it probably pays not to trust whichever system rounding is being used by Perl, but to instead implement the rounding function you need yourself.

To see why, notice how you'll still have an issue on half-way-point alternation:

    for ($i = 0; $i < 1.01; $i += 0.05) { printf "%.1f ",$i}

    0.0 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.7
    0.8 0.8 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.0

Don't blame Perl. It's the same as in C. IEEE says we have to do this. Perl numbers whose absolute values are integers under 2**31 (on 32 bit machines) will work pretty much like mathematical integers. Other numbers are not guaranteed.

Before MySQL 5.0.3, the behavior of ROUND() when the argument is halfway between two integers depends on the C library implementation. Different implementations round to the nearest even number, always up, always down, or always toward zero. If you need one kind of rounding, you should use a well-defined function such as TRUNCATE() or FLOOR()  instead.

As of MySQL 5.0.3, ROUND() uses the precision math library for exact-value arguments when the first argument is a decimal value:

    * For exact-value numbers, ROUND() uses the “round half up” or “round toward nearest” rule: A value with a fractional part of .5 or greater is rounded up to the next integer if positive or down to the next integer if negative. (In other words, it is rounded away from zero.) A value with a fractional part less than .5 is rounded down to the next integer if positive or up to the next integer if negative.

    * For approximate-value numbers, the result depends on the C library. On many systems, this means that ROUND() uses the "round to nearest even" rule: A value with any fractional part is rounded to the nearest even integer.