Storing high precision latitude/longitude numbers

Question

I'm trying to store Latitude/Longitudes in core data. These end up being anywhere from 6-20 digit precision.

And for whatever reason, i had them as floats in Core Data, its rounding them and not giving me the exact values back. I tried "decimal" type, with no luck either.

Are NSStrings my only other option?

EDIT

NSManagedObject:

@interface Event :  NSManagedObject  
{
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSDecimalNumber * dec;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSDate * timeStamp;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSNumber * flo;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSNumber * doub;

Here's the code for a sample number that I store into core data:

NSNumber *n = [NSDecimalNumber decimalNumberWithString:@"-97.12345678901234567890123456789"];

The above value printed. Sweet, value I expected:

Printing description of n:

-97.12345678901234567890123456789

Code to access it again:

NSNumber *n = [managedObject valueForKey:@"dec"];
NSNumber *f = [managedObject valueForKey:@"flo"];
NSNumber *d = [managedObject valueForKey:@"doub"];

Printed values:

Printing description of n:
    -97.1234567890124

    Printing description of f:
    <CFNumber 0x603f250 [0xfef3e0]>{value = -97.12345678901235146441, type = kCFNumberFloat64Type}

    Printing description of d:
    <CFNumber 0x6040310 [0xfef3e0]>{value = -97.12345678901235146441, type = kCFNumberFloat64Type}

Answer 1

When Core Data stores data in SQLite, it uses numeric columns. SQLite stores numbers as--at most--8-byte values, whether integer or floating-point. So, while an NSDecimalNumber would be quite happy to accurately represent these coordinate values, round-tripping them through a Core Data decimal attribute backed by SQLite will munge them.