Unexpected behaviour with float

Please consider the following code

Code:

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void main()
{
  float a = 0.7;
  if(a <= 0.7)
    printf("Less or equal");
  else
    printf("Greater");
}

---

Surprisingly (for me) it printed

Code:

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Greater

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However, when I change the initialization expression to the following

Code:

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float a = 0.8;

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and change the if condition to

Code:

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  if(a <= 0.8)

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it prints the expected output:

Code:

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Less or equal

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Kindly explain. Thank you in advance.

Nothing should suprise you when using floating point. Even more strange that on other machines the first example will print the right answer.
Read this. Check question 14.5

Quote:

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Originally Posted by j.sreejit

Please consider the following code

Code:

---

  float a = 0.7;
  if(a <= 0.7)
    printf("Less or equal");
  else
    printf("Greater");

---

Kindly explain. Thank you in advance.

---

You must check that the floating point is accurate to within a certain tolerance, i.e. plus or minus a very small value away from the value you are comparing with must be considered acceptably 'equal'.

Try this program. It takes a bunch of positive floating point numbers and then multiplies by 10 (or whatever you pass in as the first program argument), does the same operation with negative versions of the values and then shows the difference between the result and the value expected when assigned from a constant. When the multiplier is 10 the difference mathematically would be zero but some values will be slightly inaccurate. Different values will be inaccurate by different amounts on different platforms.

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
/*
  Show how fractional decimal values cannot be stored in finite number
  of binary digits
*/
int main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
 double pos, neg, pdiff, ndiff;
 int f = 10;
 int i;
 double r;
 double cpos[10] = { /* constants representing expected results */
  11.0,
  22.0,
  33.0,
  44.0,
  55.0,
  66.0,
  77.0,
  88.0,
  99.0,
  110.0
 };
 double cneg[10] = { /* constants representing expected results */
  -11.0,
  -22.0,
  -33.0,
  -44.0,
  -55.0,
  -66.0,
  -77.0,
  -88.0,
  -99.0,
  -110.0
 };
 if (argc > 1)
 {
  f = atoi(argv[1]);
 }
 printf("\t%10s %10s %10s %10s %10s\n", "i", "pos", "diff", "neg", "diff");
 pos = 0.0;
 for (i = 0; i < 10; i++)
 {
  pos += 1.1;          /* a range of positive decimal fractions */
  r = pos * f;        /* simple multiplication by 10 */
  pdiff = cpos[i] - r; /* is result different from constant */
  neg = -pos;          /* a range of negative decimal fractions */
  r = neg * f;        /* simple multiplication by 10 */
  ndiff = cneg[i] - r; /* is result different from constant */
  printf("\t");
  printf("%10d ", i);
  printf("%10.2g ", pos);
  printf("%10.2g ", pdiff);
  printf("%10.2g ", neg);
  printf("%10.2g ", ndiff);
  printf("\n");
 }
 return 0;
}

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Well that's what you get for using void main.

It's also for mixing floats and doubles.

You could try
if ( a <= 0.7f )

This question has appeared several times in the past.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Salem

This question has appeared several times in the past.

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It has also appeared many times in the future.

Ah, that would be the whole "history repeating itself, because it has to" deal.

Thank you risby, andor and salem for replying. Andor, that link was really informative. Thanks.