Re: [coders] Python newbie question

["Tim Leslie" <tim.leslie@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/14/06, Carlo Sogono <carlo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Steve Lindsay wrote:
> > I suspect it's related to this:
> >
> > http://www.python.org/doc/faq/general.html#id34
>
> Thanks. Without having gone through all the links everyone posted, I
> have come across this line in your/Tim's link:
>
> "Again, this has nothing to do with Python, but with the way the
> underlying C platform handles floating point numbers, and ultimately
> with the inaccuracy you'll always have when writing down numbers as a
> string of a fixed number of digits."
>
> However I'm pretty sure C applications do not handle floats the same
> way. This still gives me a 'normal' response:
>
> int main() {
>         float a = 8.0, b = 0.45, res;
>
>         res = a + b;
>         printf("%f\n", res);
>
>         return (EXIT_SUCCESS);
> }
>
> So my new question is, why doesn't C handle floats the same way?

It does.

int main() {
      double a = 8.0, b = 0.45, res;

      res = a + b;
      printf("%1.16f\n", res);

      return 0;
}

timl@feynman:~/src$ gcc float.c
timl@feynman:~/src$ ./a.out
8.4499999999999993

Tim

> Carlo
>
> _______________________________________________
> coders mailing list
> coders@xxxxxxxxxxx
> http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/coders