Thread: Erroroneous output in calculating the square root of a number

Dear All,

I have written a program to calculate the square root of an input number. It gives me an erroneous answer,for example, when I input the number 5, I get an answer 2.5 whereas I should get 2.24, same with other numbers. Below is the program, please point out bugs and fixes:

Code:

#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
#include<math.h>
int main()
{
    float error=.00001,g1=0.0,g2=0.0,m;
    printf("Enter number whose square root has to be calculated");
    scanf("%f",&m);
    g2=m/2;
    while (abs(g1-g2)<error)
    {
          g1=g2;
          g2=(g1+(m/g1))/2;
    }
    printf("The square root of entered number is %f",g2);
    system("pause");
    return 0;
}

you are not mistaken. abs will convert the return value to integer and should issue a compiler warning if warning levels are high enough which would catch this type of error.

Incorporated the changes that you mentioned....program still returning the wrong values...got 2.5 as the square root of 5...

Originally Posted by QuantumPete

You should use double instead of float for more precision. Also if I'm not mistaken, you should use fabs() instead of abs() on floating-point numbers.

Thanks...solved my problem.

Originally Posted by iMalc

You should learn to use youre debugger. Had you done that, you would have very easily noticed the problem by stepping through the code.

Line 10 has the wrong comparison operator, so it is not entering the loop.