Floating Point Gotchas

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Floating point comparisons should be undertaken with care, because decimal numbers cannot be exactly represented using float or double.

One should therefore in most cases use std.math.feqrel and or std.math.approxEqual instead of checking for simple equality.

These functions may be passed as a predicate to the std.algorithm library in Phobos when for example doing a search for a specific floating point value:

   void main() @safe {
       import std.stdio, std.range, std.algorithm, std.math;
   
       immutable float oneDegree = (PI / 180.0f);
       immutable float first = -(oneDegree * 10.0f);
       immutable float second = (oneDegree * 10.0f);
       immutable float step = 0.000001f;
       immutable float[] r = iota(first, second, step).array;
   
       //r.writeln;
   
       immutable float item = 0.174531f;
       r.canFind!q{ feqrel(cast()a, cast()b) >= 21 }(item).writeln;
   }

See also