On Thu, 2010-11-11 at 21:57 -0800, 0throot wrote:
> In one of my programs, I found a wierd problem with float multiplication. Any
> insights you can provide will be very helpful.
>
> The program is as follows,
>
> #include <stdio.h>
> int main(void) { float a=4097, b=4097, c=0; c=a*b; printf("%12.2f != %d\n",
> c, 4097*4097); return 0; }
>
> The output i get is,
>
> 16785408.00 != 16785409
>
> I never thought using float over int could have such adverse effects.
>
> Is this the correct behavior ? or am i doing something wrong here ?
>
> Following are the system details,
>
> gcc version 4.4.2 20091027 (Red Hat 4.4.2-7) (GCC)
> Fedora release 12 (Constantine)
> Linux lap.local 2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE #1 SMP Sat Nov 7 21:25:57 EST
> 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
>
> 0/
GNU/Linux on x86 hardware uses a 32-bit float, which has only 24 bits of
resolution. 2^24 = 16,777,216.
4,097 * 4,097 = 16,785,409 > 16,777,216.
You're seeing round-off error. Try using doubles instead of floats (but
you may still get round-off error.)
Be aware, though, that floating point numbers use part of their bits for
the exponent. So for a given number of bits, they have less resolution
than integers. The trade off is range versus resolution. A common
mistake among beginning programmers is to think of floats as reals. They
are not. They are discrete values, which are not evenly distributed
throughout their range.
--Bob
